Reviews

Comic book bad guys vs. Good guy who refuses to act until the last act. Super hero with a conflicted background and unknown origins suddenly saves the day. Stopped and restarted the movie three times, unsure if the end would be worth the wait. The cheesy cheap CGI and Stallone's character didn't hold water. The kid's character wasn't believable. He shows boxing skills he never uses against the bad guys. Talks like an adult not a ghetto kid. Gets beat up and barely a mark on him. Lives in a ghetto wearing designer clean clothes. Finally a loooong wait to see Stallone strut his stuff. Not worth the trouble in the end.

Before you begin watching, just forget about the niceties of movie-making like suspension of belief. The movie doesn't try to bring you along to that point. It just smashes you in the face with purposefully over-the-top stunts that defy belief in the first few minutes and gets worse from there. The acting similarly doesn't bother to ask you to believe. The wooden characters generate no sympathy or real interest.

True, many cowboys were black, but this revisionist view overcompensates and swerves widely from any truth about the Old West. The characters bear little resemblance to real black cowboys or lawmen. The (white) soldiers are cowards. A train conductor stops the train for a single horse rider on the tracks. As a result, the movie fails to suspend disbelief and never earns the viewer's interest or respect.

The bad guys' aim, armed with submachine guns, is no better than the Storm Troopers in Star Wars armed with E-11 Blaster Rifles. I suspect the hired the same extras.

I swear they stole the opening from the cut scenes of a cheap video game that failed to ever launch. Trite, well-used tropes that fail to build suspense or believability. Soldiers panicking on a radio, soldiers who can't salute, CGI so crisp it lacks realism.

Without reading the books, I think Reacher's tactical combat and shooting skills ought to be more consistent. For a series climax, the final warehouse battle is shoddy work. The extraordinarily obvious fake CGI fire left me with absolutely no suspense.

Lame, slow, weak plot, inconsistent, convoluted, confused, talky, lacks tension. Tries to cash in on every past touchpoint but fails to pay it forward.

Implausible even for the MCU and a waste of two hours.

The set pieces are predictable, the chases obvious, the characters cartoonish, the banter too obvious. Good for an afternoon matinee when it's raining.

Liam Neeson's character, a Marine Corp veteran, finally remembers how to fight and shoot in the last few minutes of the movie, but the movie is so slow going, by that point you've pretty much lost interest and sympathy with him.

Hey, anything with Clint Eastwood is a must see, right? Wrong.

Co-star Rufo (Eduardo Minett) acts like he's in a Mexican telenovela. His acting is wooden and his character -- surviving on the streets -- isn't believable. The May - September (should be February - November) relationship that evolves between Marta (Natalia Traven) the cafe owner and the old fart Mike Miles (Eastwood) also isn't credible. Rufo's father Howard Polk (Dwight Yokum) lacks depth and his motivations are too ambiguous.

Most of all, the story lacks an authentic, meaningful conflict to move the plot forward. Miles has a job to do: deliver the kid to his father. What stops him? A quaint Mexican town prompts Miles to take a vacation for two weeks. A local Sheriff is menacing but that soon evaporates. A henchman hired by Rufo's mother briefly appears now and again, but only poses a comic book level threat. Various Federales come and go without contributing much until the last few minutes.

Without Eastwood's presence, it's a one-star film.

Not your formulaic detective movie. You have to be patient to get to the bottom of this film. The characters show themselves slowly and even creepily. The plot unwinds on you in staggered, unequal chunks. It's worth the wait.

There isn't anything about his movie that works. Characters, script, acting, plot, effects. Liam Neeson is the only actor who leads ANY credibility to his mess, so he gets the one star. I could to into more details, but I'd just be reiterating what others have already written. Don't bother. Watch Ice Road Trucker, it's way more entertaining.

I like a good war movie. This isn't one of them. Big and little mistakes quickly break your suspension of disbelief. Big: an infantry Sgt. Gets busted down to cook? Not likely. Little: unloading rations from a truck, it's painfully obvious this large wooden boxes are empty. Soldiers toss them like matchsticks.

Wooden acting, no believable suspense, don't bother.

Where things happen that characters completely ignore, like a guy with a senior management job who just never calls in and never shows up again; supposed weapons experts use a shooting range without eye or ear protection and who leave weapons full of ammo laying around unsecured; or a babysitter who gets killed, provoking no reaction from the little boy she watches, and then disappears; and "doubled security" but the gate guard is reading a magazine. But why go on? It's Death Wish rerun.

Will the characters ever shut up and get on with the story?!? Yakkity, yak, yak, yak. Over blown, egocentric, cheesy, predictable. There's no suspense here. No feeling that any of the main characters are ever in danger, or that they won't accomplish their mission.

Politically correct from beginning to end and only mildly entertaining. It's difficult to watch this movie and not compare it to the original 1987 film, but even on its own, the main actors barely carry their weight.

Eugenio Derbez' emotional movement from rich, spoiled brat to lovable working dad is uneven and awkward. Farris' journey is similarly wooden, lacking a real connection and emotional range. The 14 year age difference between Ana Farris and Eugenio Derbez weighs down their eventual romance. The two never show any believable chemistry. Ana "boops" Derbez' on the nose as if this had been an intimate connection between them, and it falls completely flat.

The overtones of politically correct Hollywood movie-making weigh the movie down. The gender swapping of the lead characters; casting of a Latino in a lead role who speaks Spanish throughout the movie; the mention of a gay teenage life guard; a girl at a wedding in boys clothing. It's not enough to tell a story, Hollywood has to reeducate us too.

The film's pacing is terrible --.time is badly telescoped; relationship conflicts are set up, ignored for years, and suddenly re-escalated; a key event Is telegraphed in a strange, symbolic, visual reference that takes several minutes to be explained. The poor writing creates characters that aren't believable.

I'm not motivated to review many movies, but here a good premise frustrated and disappointed me. I wanted to like this movie, but in the end it was undone by an uneven script, unrealized plot, and unbelievable characters. I even like Christian movies when done well, but unlike other reviewers I don't believe that factor alone merits a blind 10 stars.

The film begins with a confusing flash-forward, necessary apparently to get you to develop sympathy for the protagonist. He is a poor business owner who, like Job, is saddled with one adversity after another. You're sympathetic for him at first, but he's appears hapless and directionless for 90% of the movie.

He befriends a woman whose son seems to have ADHD on overdrive, so energetic as to be irritating and a distraction. For some reason he's attracted to this kid and his mother, although there is about 2% on-screen chemistry between them.

I kept waiting for this movie to realize it's potential. For example, there's a bar scene where the conspirators' scheming is obviously overheard by an individual nearby, but nothing comes of it. You think the new woman friend with her accounting skills will unwind the plot against him. But she mysteriously can't find anything wrong. The mayor talks conspiratoratorily with an antagonist, but you're never sure which side he is on. The protagonist captures some thugs on his phone outside a bar walking, which proves... what? Job - I mean the factory owner - gets hold of a bunch of random transactions, which are evidence of something nefarious, but never revealed.

The director could have done a much better job with the script.

I can buy into the premise of the film which makes for some great action. But the boat is the most believable character in the movie. Because for anyone remotely familiar with military standards, the actions of several key characters who fail to follow basic military protocol are mind-numbing.

For example, the XO repeatedly challenges the boat captain's orders in front of the crew. The captain takes unauthorized action in some instances that might result in court-martial, but when authorised from on high (absolving him of responsibility) to defend the sub, he doesn't do anything. And the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff reads the riot act in an uncontrolled, spitting rant to an admiral in front of subordinates. Un-believe-able.

But if this kind of attention to character detail doesn't bother you, the film is an unblemished good ride.

Provocative concept: The newcomer to the church corners the pastor in his home with a gun. He challenges the pastor to either prove God exists or renounce his faith, otherwise the newcomer will kill the pastor.

Terrible execution: The acting was intolerable; the dialogue was badly written; the characters weren't believable.

I couldn't finish watching it, so I don't have any idea how it ends, and I don't care.

Wow, the impossible has happened. The Syfy Channel has run out of infomercials. That's the only possible explanation I can think of for running this movie. And frankly, most infomercials would have been more enjoyable.

Mario Van Peebles phones in another role. Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head have more on screen chemistry than the commander and his love interest. The rest of the cast is completely forgettable. I've seen better acting in most commercials.

It must have taken 2 weeks to shoot this movie, because so many scenes were shown repeatedly. The special effects look like they were whipped up by a teenager for his film class. Correct that, his CGI would have been better.

On the plus side, there's one reason to watch this movie: for laughs because it's so bad.