Half of a Success -- Wait to Rent

Rating: Null/10 (24 April 2004)

Ex-soldier Creasey (Washington), who has an unnamed violent and tragic past, takes a job bodyguarding Marc Anthony's little girl in Mexico City. The two bond, the girl is taken, and Washington goes on a rampage.

Not-bad crack at a tough guy action flick. Director Tony Scott, a hack who generally panders to every sort of upbeat Hollywood cliche, is here admirably grim and gritty (at least by his standards), with some graphic violence that wouldn't have looked out of place in a Seventies era Bronson movie. There's a lot of quick cuts, MTV style montages, and Fincheresque playing around with the medium (the use of subtitles) that sometimes works, sometimes doesn't, but at least suggests Scott's motivated and interested this time out. Some absolutely beautiful location shooting in Mexico City, too.
The plot is crap, unfortunately, and that matters more here than it did in THE PUNISHER, say, since PUNISHER was a comic book movie with no pretensions to be anything else, while this is clearly trying to aim higher. Without spoiling anything, major entities have to act in bizarre ways, major characters have to behave pretty incredibly, and minor characters have important roles but unclear motivations (partly because the information is withheld from us -- I suspect editing's at fault). I did like, though, the fact that the nature of Washington's pain is never revealed, as well as the rather sad ending. Again, that's more bracing stuff than Tony Scott normally delivers.
Washington's always believable in tough guy roles, and he's good here, for the most part. Nobody does righteous rage like Washington. The movie takes it's time, mainly to set up the relationship between Washington and the girl so that the subsequent action has meaning. I understand the concept but fault the execution -- Washington does not relax very convincingly onscreen, and the bonding scenes seemed rather painful to me. The girl Dakota is sometimes okay and believable, sometimes preternaturally aware in the typical Hollywood tradition. Frankly I found her more evocative as a kind of ghost haunting Washington, than as a presence.
Not bad, but probably only worth renting, where you can skip past the slow stuff and concentrate on the good sections. With Christopher Walken (looking rather frail and old, I thought) and an almost-unrecognizable Mickey Rourke.