Producers: Randall Emmett, George Furla, Shaun Sanghani, Alex Eckert, Tim Sullivan and Mark Stewart Director: Matt Eskandari Screenplay: Joe Russo and Chris LaMont Cast: Jesse Metcalfe, Bruce Willis, Natalie Eva Marie, Lala Kent, Texas Battle, Swen Temmel, Sergio Rizzuto, Tyler Jon Olson, Jacquie Nguyen and Jon Galanis Distributor: Vertical Entertainment
Grade: F
Whatever gave moviemakers the idea that stuffing an action flick with endless gun battles in which small armies of brainless adversaries shoot away at one another with automatic weapons was remotely exciting or entertaining? Yet that’s about all “Hard Kill” has to offer. A conservative estimate might put the cost of all the blanks fired in the course of the running-time at fifty per-cent of the total budget—if it weren’t for the fact that a considerable sum must have been allocated to the salary paid Bruce Willis for appearing in it.
Note that the operative word is “appearing” rather than “acting,” since he really does none of the latter in his role as Donovan Chalmers, a tech mogul who was once a legendary soldier. What passes for a plot kicks in when Derek Miller (Jesse Metcalfe, beefed up considerably since his days as a teen TV soap opera heartthrob and sporting a beard and full panoply of tattoos to look macho, though his thespian abilities have progressed very little), who now leads a gang of hotshots-for-hire composed of his old army squadron, is approached by Chalmers’ aide Nick Fox (Texas Battle, if you can swallow that name)—who once saved his life in combat—to take on an assignment: Miller and his crew will protect the mogul as he inspects a deserted factory he’s considering buying for a new plant of some sort.
Miller is suspicious that there’s more to the job than Fox is saying, but he owes the guy, and so persuades his team—beauteous hard-ass Sasha Zindel (Natalie Eva Marie), her reckless brother Harrison (Jon Galsanis), and gung-ho Dash Hawkins (Swen Temmel) —to take on the assignment.
Naturally it’s a set-up. Once at the factory, Chalmers and Fox inform them of the truth. The mogul’s estranged daughter Ava (Lala Kent), who’d been developing a revolutionary AI system called Project 725, has fallen in with a notorious terrorist called The Pardoner (Sergio Rizzuto), who aims to use the invention to destroy the world’s technological underpinnings so that humanity—or its survivors—will be forced to start anew with a clean slate. (He’s an idealist of sorts, you see.) But to pull off the plan he needs the code to start the program, which only the old man knows. The crew at the factory is bait to draw the madman to attack in hope of exchanging Ava for the code—or something like that.
What results is a prolonged stand-off between the two sides. Ava has reconsidered her alliance with the terrorist, of course, and she and daddy overcome their former misunderstandings. Miller has to face off against the Pardoner, whom he’s met before (their re-acquaintance naturally involves protracted hand-to-hand combat). With one exception (Jacqie Nguyen as his tech-savvy henchwoman), The Pardoner’s black-clad crew prove extraordinarily inept, while Miller’s are crack shots.
The script’s premise is dumb from the get-go, and the writers manage to encumber it with virtually every hackneyed action-movie situation and line of dialogue imaginable. The result is completely risible, especially because the acting is unremittingly leaden (with Kent especially amateurish and Rizzuto spouting ludicrous lines about establishing a “new world order” in a thin, squeaky voice) and the gun-battle choreography sloppy. The drab setting credited to production designer Daniel Alan Baker and murky cinematography of Bryan Koss accentuate the bargain-basement quality of the enterprise, while Matt Eskandari’s lackadaisical direction and Rudi Cooper’s sluggish editing italicize its claustrophobic cheapness. Rhyan D’Errico’s maddening score tries to infuse the proceedings with some energy but fails miserably.
The title of this noisy, stupid, totally boring bomb should really be “Hard Watch”—unless you’re willing to treat its avalanche of clichés as an invitation to an unintentional laugh-fest.