This is a standard Tony Scott product: filmed for maximum darkness even in sunlight, and indulging heavily in two kinds of violence: mayhem and cruelty. The mayhem is spectacular, e.g., when a chase scene ends with a car flying through the air and landing in a swimming pool. The cruelty actually borders on sadism, but cannot be taken seriously because, except when a character actually expires, everybody heals pretty quickly so they can be beaten again. Or shot or knived or blown up. Whatever.
Wisecracks also fly, plenty of them, liberally laced with the f-word in all its forms, as an adjective, verb, noun, expletive. Joe (Bruce Willis) has a recalcitrant 13-year-old daughter and even she has a foul mouth. Still, the dialog is witty enough to make the whole thing amusing, if formulaic: the bad guys are irredeemably bad while the good guys (Willis and Damon Wayans) are irrepressible alpha males who quip in the face of death. E.g., Joe to a thug holding a gun to his head: "Now I'm not saying your girlfriend is fat, but her high school picture was an aerial photograph." And this, Jimmy to Joe: "I'm going to the bathroom, okay. You wanna come? The doc said I shouldn't lift anything heavy."
But here's my problem: Bruce Willis performs at a zombie level. Wayans is fine, as handsome as he is talented, but I felt cheated because I watched it for Willis, an actor whose popularity overshadows (I can't bring myself to use the past tense) his considerable talent. His subtlety of expression can lift your spirits one second, and break your heart the next. But as Joe, he is stoic. He takes beatings with the same lack of affect he uses to deliver his lines, mining none of the gold that is his charm. Joe is given a miserable backstory-- a cheating wife, an unlikeable daughter, a partner who betrays him-- but so are most private detectives in movies. So why the diminution? I was left wondering if it was his own choice to perform at half-strength, or if that's how it was written? Or directed? For whatever reason, it did the film no favors.
Wisecracks also fly, plenty of them, liberally laced with the f-word in all its forms, as an adjective, verb, noun, expletive. Joe (Bruce Willis) has a recalcitrant 13-year-old daughter and even she has a foul mouth. Still, the dialog is witty enough to make the whole thing amusing, if formulaic: the bad guys are irredeemably bad while the good guys (Willis and Damon Wayans) are irrepressible alpha males who quip in the face of death. E.g., Joe to a thug holding a gun to his head: "Now I'm not saying your girlfriend is fat, but her high school picture was an aerial photograph." And this, Jimmy to Joe: "I'm going to the bathroom, okay. You wanna come? The doc said I shouldn't lift anything heavy."
But here's my problem: Bruce Willis performs at a zombie level. Wayans is fine, as handsome as he is talented, but I felt cheated because I watched it for Willis, an actor whose popularity overshadows (I can't bring myself to use the past tense) his considerable talent. His subtlety of expression can lift your spirits one second, and break your heart the next. But as Joe, he is stoic. He takes beatings with the same lack of affect he uses to deliver his lines, mining none of the gold that is his charm. Joe is given a miserable backstory-- a cheating wife, an unlikeable daughter, a partner who betrays him-- but so are most private detectives in movies. So why the diminution? I was left wondering if it was his own choice to perform at half-strength, or if that's how it was written? Or directed? For whatever reason, it did the film no favors.