Tag Archives: bruce willis

Extraction

action, movies, thriller, , ,

extractionDirected by Chris C. Miller, Extraction opens with CIA field operative Leonard Turner played by Bruce Willis. The scene is an important part of the story because his wife is killed by the bad guys, and he prevents his son from being killed as well.

Next, we see his son Harry, played by Kellan Lutz, and it is ten years later. He followed his father’s footsteps and is a CIA agent.  He is training under the keen guidance of Leonard’s best friend Ken played by D.B. Sweeney. Harry wants to be a field agent like his father but keeps getting turned down. He is assigned to a project involving a top secret piece of electronic equipment called CONDOR. It is pretty powerful and can control anything electric.

Leonard is sent on a mission to purchase CONDOR and gets captured. Harry finds out and wants to save his father, but is told to stand down. Harry figures out who captured his father, but the CIA says he isn’t strong enough to help save his father and send him home with an armed escort. Harry breaks away and sets his sights on saving his father.

Victoria Phipps, played by Gina Carano, is assigned to the case. She is one of the best field agents, and to make the story more interesting, a former lover of Harry. She lets him join her and help track down CONDOR, find his father, and take down the bad guys. Time is the key to pulling this all off, and they have to work fasts. The story has some twists and turns and confusion occurs on trying to figure out who are the bad guys and who are the good guys.

Seems like a pretty good action movie, but in all honest it isn’t that great. Technical glitches with the overall sound and vocals are disconcerting. The odd edit cuts and jumps prevent the flow of the story. On top of that, I enjoy watching Carano do her action stuff, which I have seen in her other movies. She’s great, but in this movie, she doesn’t do all that much. I mean, she is a former MMA fighter. Let her show her stuff.

All in all, I really wanted to like this movie, but it started off great and went downhill from there.

Lesser-Known Movies with Well-known Stars

action, adventure, children, drama, , , ,

Son_Of_A_Gun

Son of a Gun from Down Under

Son of a Gun is not a great gangster movie, and I lost my interest about half way through the movie. I turned off the movie when JR, played by Brenton Thwaites, who reminds me of a young Colin Farrell, goes swimming with the gangster’s girlfriend.  The story was too predictable. Don’t get me wrong. The acting was stellar.

The story is about JR meeting crime boss Brendan (Ewan McGregor) while serving a short stint in prison. Brendan protects JR from gang rapes in prison with the understanding he now owes Brendan his life. JR gets out of prison. He breaks Brendan and two other cohorts out of prison. They embark on a heist with a Brendan’s girl (Alicia Vikander) who I mentioned earlier.

What happens next?  The story can be easily guessed , and I wasn’t interested in finding out if I was right.

captive

The Captive

I think Ryan Reynolds made this movie in Canada while his wife Blake Lively was starring in a much better movie being filmed in Canada.  I guess, it was something for him to do, so he could hang with his wife in Canada.

The Captive has a good message, but many plot points are missing, and I suspect that the movie just didn’t have the budget to develop a strong storyline.  The result is several puzzle pieces missing on a rather easy puzzle to put together.  That is aggravating as a viewer.

Using flashbacks and forwards and more flashbacks makes matters worse because the back stories of key characters are the puzzle pieces missing.  If they had added those, I think the movie would have come off like nice little movie with a strong message.

The acting was believable, but like I said, I wanted to know more about the characters’ back story.

laggies

Laggies

Keira Knightley and Chloe Grace Moretz are actresses that I enjoying watching on film because they are believable and have honest performances.  Sam Rockwell, who also stars in this movie, is just as believable. Having all three of them in this simple, splice of life, indie movie is pure joy.

I wouldn’t call this movie a gem, but I would say it’s worth the time to view.  The story is about a woman, Knightley, who follows a different beat from her lifelong friends.  She has a college education, supporting parents, a committed boyfriend, and yet she feels she is missing something from her life.

She meets Moretz’s character, a High School student, with a divorced dad (Rockwell) and an absentee mother.  All four characters discover something about themselves in a rather awkward and thought provoking way.

Vice

Vice

Bruce Willis is a legend. Yet, he picks movies that are poorly produced.  Vice is one of those movies. Tons of wasted material with a lost plot delivered at a snail’s pace.  Bruce Willis is great in the movie, and likely he shot his role in a couple of days.

The movie looks like a video game gone wrong, nothing substantial backs up the storyline.  There are more holes in each scene that I couldn’t watch it, so I had to turn the movie off.

The movie starts with Bruce Willis explaining the futuristic city of Vice like the movie Westworld. Though Westworld was believable and entertaining and Vice is not.