Just a reminder that this review was produced many months before Willis revealed his condition, although at this point I was beginning to speculate there was something more serious at play. So bear that in mind, and apologies again for any remarks that seem insensitive with the benefit of hindsight.
I believe this review has aged far too well. It is tragic that this happened and the subject deserves more analysis, albeit hopefully after more credible information has come out.
I remember Stallone describing Escape Plan 2 [another EFO production] as the "most horribly produced film I have ever had the misfortune to be in". In contrast I doubt Willis has even watched any of these films.
Thank you for the review. We appreciate you watching the film. The cast and crew actually worked really hard to make this film happen during the Covid crisis. I hope you'll review my next film. And Yes,. the comment from Talen lee is dead-on regarding the title. I suppose it was a bad assumption to think people read the bible and know the phrase and meaning.
Thank you for watching and commenting, even if it was probably a tough watch. I really do wish you the best of luck on your next film, you had really rotten luck here given the circumstances, and hope everything goes a lot smoother next time around.
James Cameron started off doing dodgy Roger Corman films so there's always hope. Might want to go independent low budget horror to get better projects down the track ( Cameron, Raimi, Roth, Peter Jackson) to name a few... And avoid the Bruce's of the world.
@@ziggypsy1 I was given 9 days to shoot the entire film and only one with day Bruce. I did the best we could under the parameters given.It was no small feat and I'm proud of what we accomplished. Regardless of armchair critics and Bruce haters, the film did go to #1 for a week on Hulu and Netflix overseas.. so thats something for a first-time filmmaker. It got me another job and i'm pleased with how it turned out. Bruce is an amazing person and will always be iconic in my book.
Mike Burns, it is impressive how you are a director that essentially made a career in audio production, but still had the talent to mix the audio where the voices were drowned out by the soundtrack and background noise. It is like the sounds played a bigger role than Bruce Willis.
I saw Bruce Willis in the thumbnail and thought "I hope this is a review that pisses Mathew off!" It's always fun to see him shift into Bad Movie Beatdown mode even though he's a legit reviewer now.
So the term 'out of death' is possibly a reference to the poetic idea of life growing out of death (like tragedy giving way to good things). When you describe that these two were both grieving a recent death (Wilis his wife and... Ms... Protagonist her father), there's the notion that they grow together and form a life together 'out of death.' There, I've now done all the book report homework this movie could have done
At least Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger still TRY to appear in quality projects. Bruce Willis is a better actor than them, but he just does not care anymore. And that’s sad.
@@shitmandood I mean, Marlon Brando got fat and lazy at old age and was a pain in the ass to work with. But at least he usually picked quality productions with well regarded directors.
@@wjzav1971 I'm guessing Willis has retired from acting, so he's just these two-day events for some extra walking around money. Or he's bent out of shape that Hollywood blockbusters won't pay him $20 million per film or whatever, so he's scrounging and putting out a lot of crap. Maybe one day there will be so many of these bad movies, that people won't give a shit about a Willis movie. hahaha.
I have to be honest. Is there ANYONE out there excited for Bruce Willis movies at this point? I feel like his body double has a bigger fanbase than him!
It's hard to get excited for a Bruce Willis movie when Willis himself can't get excited about any of his movies. Seriously, when's the last time you've seen a Willis movie where he looked like he actually wanted to be there?
this makes me miss your Bad Movie Beatdown format, I bet it would have been fun to see a traditional scene by scene review where you could put in a "actor's body double" count or something
The count would be fun but I remember him saying in 'the marksman' review it would have been hard to do BMB format to generic VOD fare. It's a lot easier to do it via a Video essay
Unfortunate production troubles and Bruce "I'm just here for my retirement fund" Willis issues aside this movie sounds like pure Clown shoes unintentional comedy FUN!!!! From the editing, the supporting cast's 'quality' performances and the way they had to pad out large chunks to accommodate for people's filming schedules just sounds like a good film to riff on and enjoy after a few beers on a Saturday night.
Reminds me of John Cena's The Marine, where the villains (main bad guy played by Robert Patrick) would also sometimes just go off on unrelated tangents, making the film very funny.
I'd rather remember him as he was when I first saw him. Getting shot by his abused wife on Miami Vice with Phil Collins singing, "I Don't Care Anymore".
I haven't seen any of these smaller Bruce Willis movies but from the way you describe it, it seems to be similar to the direct-to-video Steven Seagal stuff :) It would probably be interesting to study these and compare :)
I was waiting for someone to make the 'Seagal' comparison. You're absolutely right in that they now make movies the same way only one used to be BRUCE WILLIS while the other...
@@dariogeorge8680 What the hell is he paying for where he really needs that much money? His estimated worth is $186 million. If you look around, there's very few things you can blow $2 million on..just land, houses, and yachts. Even an Apple Mac Pro Desktop, with every option, would run you $55,000 max. Or do you think he's taking these roles just to maintain his acting skills? Bruce "Weird" Willis.
I don't get Bruce Willis now. If he's honestly as bored and miserable as he seemingly comes across on screen, then WHY is he doing schlock like this? Has he torched his career that badly that no other studios will take him now? Why would you do something you didn't care about if you had other options?
That's the mystery. He was one of Hollywood's highest paid actors for many years. Unless he secretly has the combined spending habits of Nicolas Cage, 50 Cent, and Elton John, he's a multimillionaire. I've never heard or read that he is in a financial situation that's in any way comparable to Cage's - who has to take any offers he can get, no matter how embarrassingly bad the resulting movies are, or his creditors will boil him alive and sell his fat to a soap factory. Willis shouldn't need to do anything he doesn't want to do. It's almost as if making as much money as possible, while putting in the least effort imaginable and being a nightmare to deal with on set, is some sort of weird fetish for him. Kind of like Marlon Brando towards the end of is life, but at least his behaviour was so over-the-top, eccentric and bizarre, it was funny. Brando also had already publically voiced complete and utter contempt for his industry and profession for years before he stopped putting in any effort and gleefully sabotaged productions he was still hired for. Everybody knew what they were getting when they hired him at this point. A spoiled, malicious, disruptive, chaotic overgrown child. Present-day Willis just seems miserable, dour, petty, and scummy. No hint of gleeful eccentricity and rebellious mischief - just sad, pissy misanthropy.
Remember that episode of "Community" where they tried to capitalize off of Chang's brief internet fame by repurposing some random footage of him talking to someone at a table 2 minutes into a sci-fi feature? Just thought I'd bring that up
Does anyone see a Bruce Willis career comeback a la Sylvester Stallone? Personally, I don’t. Stallone likes making movies. He doesn’t care it he’s playing a gigantic simple-minded shark man in a James Gunn movie or rocky balboa or his 1,000th cop in some crappy action movie. He’s just happy to work. Willis just does. Not. Care. He’s been bored and over everything for years. It’s about the paycheck for him and it shows.
I finally watched this masterpiece and the scene with Bruce's body double picking up the phone and taking his pills was amazing. Awesome Seagal vibes there. This film is so terrible, it's uncanny.
Seagal and Willis are Two former Action Stars they lost the Power! Nicolas Cage, Silvester Stallone and Schwarzenegger have sometimes good moment's, but Seagal and Willis have the last good Moment for 20 Years!
I'm intrigued by these kinds of movies, because it's truly fascinating to me where the craft of filmmaking has gone at the B-level. This comes off like a movie that would've had Joe Estevez or maybe David Carradine in the '80s or '90s, but now the basic tools of filmmaking have proliferated so much, and there are so many big-name actors looking for a payday for either retirement or, in Willis' ever-sad case, because they don't actually enjoy acting and would rather be playing the most mediocre blues you've ever heard.
I don't know, he just seems miserable and deeply misanthropic all the time now. What good does all that money do when you just hate everything and everybody, including yourself? I'm not envious of that part of his "lifestyle and career formula" at all. I'm not jealous of an artist who lost all of his passion for his profession and takes no pride in his work anymore, either.
I'm late to the party, but I was just forced to watch this movie yesterday and had some thoughts I wanted to share. The only reason Bruce Willis even finds her in time is because the female lead's mouth gag magically dissapears from one scene to the next, allowing her to scream for help. The female lead only survives her encounters with the crooked police because they decide to split up... TWICE. Allowing her to get a one up on them in a 1v1 scenario. It's even dumber the first time because they literally hear her bumbling around in a shed, yet the male cop still decides they should split up, since both the people they are hunting might not be there. So the female cop goes to the shed, alone... and with no weapon. Predictably she gets stabbed in the leg. The peak of the movie, the only enjoyable part really, was when it turned into an unintended comedy. The sheriff just forced his brother (the male cop) to undo the bandage of the female cop, killing her. The male cop then has a heartfelt tragic scene where he vows to take care of her kid and that he's gonna make this right, he then carries her body off to somewhere. Meanwhile the female lead is sprinting through the woods to find her bag where evidence of the drug deal was kept. She happens to run past him just as he's descending from a slope with the body, WHICH HE THEN DROPS LIKE A SACK OF POTATOES. It was at this point that I started laughing my ass off for a solid 10-20 seconds. There's a lot of other stupid stuff in the plot of this movie, but this stood out to me the most.
Big WTF moment for me in the movie comes when the lead villain is calling one of the deputy henchmen on his cellphone; the henchman is dead so he gets the phone's voicemail. Which, while the camera's is focused on the dead henchman's body, we hear the voicemail greeting and accompanying beep like it's an old answering machine with a micro-cassette tape in it.
A 2017 EFO film 'Arsenal' [aka Southern Fury] is a typical EFO bait and switch as Nicholas Cage and John Cusack are the billed stars but hare borderline cameos so the film really is lead by a bunch of C-Listers. Still, Cage had fun as he randomly decided to reprise his role in the infamous 'Deadfall' for some reason!
Coming here from the Gasoline Alley review, its odd looking at this and wondering if this was an early sign of the issues Willis is rumoured to be having.
It genuinely amazes me, that as a kid in the '90's I read the reviews SLAMMING: 'The Last Boy Scout', 'Hudson Hawk', 'Striking Distance' and 'The Bonfire Of The Vanities'...Now you can say what you like about the flaws in those films, the point is they used to be considered (by critics & some audiences) BAD Bruce Willis movies(!)
@@skornie123 Exactly! Last Boy Scout is a GREAT movie! I don't know how it was originally supposed to look because according to writer Shane Black the studio butchered his script, but enough of it survives to play like a 'Tarantino' film before 'he' was making movies. People didn't know how good they had it back then, oh and Bruce Willis acts like he gives a sh*t. R.I.P. Tony Scott.
The vast majority of the public won't have seen or even been aware of these VOD films while big theatrical films have a wider audience/notoriety [such as 2019's Cat's being the by-word for bad films for a while]. Additionally, all the films you've mentioned had troubled productions so they were being talked about in newspapers etc months before they were released, hence the backlash to the finished product.
@@aj7808 The original script is on line/details are on TV Tropes. Personally I think the changes made it a bit more palitable [originally Milo was going to be making suff films involving torturing women]. The wife was going to be a kidnapped+ rescued for the climax but Willis said that was too near Die Hard, leading to the 3rd act being changed.
When I saw the opening scene, I was so confused! Rofl And then as it went on, I couldn't look away. I kept wondering is he's losing his marbles cuz he's getting up there in years Lol
I have to wonder if things would be better if they took all the money they spent on Bruce Willis, and instead used that on (even a little bit) better actors all around and more time on a better product. Maybe, maybe not. I guess if they make enough money, even if it's just in the short term, the people in charge don't care about any of that.
They are banking on people in supermarkets/ on streaming going 'oh, Bruce Willis, I'll check it out'. If this film just had Jamie King in it, less people would buy it [the only thing the producers care about] even if it was a superior film.
How about with all that time and expansive forrest the woman still fails to create any space between her and the bad cops and keeps running into them instead of just going to town to get help. She even heard the guy making a lot of noise, huffing and carrying his dead partner and instead of just staying quiet and still, she exposes herself and runs directly across his path out in the open, forcing him to drop his partner and chase her. Or how the guy barely covers the bodies with a precarious pile of dead leaves, leaving both of their heads exposed on an obviously regularly used hiking trail.
That scene was honestly the only part I enjoyed, as it turned into a sort of black comedy for me, when before that he just vowed to make it right and take care of her kid, only to then drop her body like a sack of potatoes.
Doubt it made actual cinematic release. Feel like it might be fun to watch as one of the worst movies of all time. Of course, sad now to know what was behind Willis's decline and choice in picking cash before retirement. The real villains are the producers who knowingly make crap films.
Bruce Willis is even stealing Steven Seagals bad movie names now. Bruce's recent movies: Hard Kill (2020) Out of Death (2021) American Siege (2021) It's all direct to video trash ! It kind of shows Bruce Willis's contempt for his fans. He's perfectly happy making this absolute dreck, putting his face on the poster and walking away with a fat check...
Watched this on netflix in the uk, i had to seek out some reviews to confirm just how bloody awful it was. The fact that bruce willis has them both at gunpoint and then decides to just run away was the most ridiculous thing i have ever seen!
I never liked Bruce Willis, as either a person or as an actor, but even I wouldn't wish this career on him. Oh well. He seems comfortable, rolling around in money.
Great review as always. But "Post-Covid"??? "During the pandemic?"??? Did I miss something? AFAIK, Covid is still going strong and it won't ever vanish completely. We all will have to live with it being there, one way or other.
As in "after the pandemic started", not to imply it had finished. As there are still plenty of films that shot before the pandemic only releasing now, it is worthy to note ones that filmed during it.
@@FilmBrain Okay, I get you. And of course I agree with you that filming during the pandemic is vastly different than before it. Thanks for clearing that up :-)
This movie is so completely lacking and boring, I actually started watching this review while the film was playing. This video was so much more entertaining! I made the mistake of trusting Willis' brand as a sign of a good movie (like you pointed out)... can't believe I fell for that. He only stayed for one day for this movie? What an asshole! It feels like it was made in one day. And what was with that opening? Yeah, it was bizarre! The music was so all over the place and not in line with the scene tones. So many scenes just felt really wrong compared to the awful background noise. It just felt like a total mess, as aimless as the characters in the film seemed to be. If that was the symbolism they were going for then that is pure genius. Ended the film after your review and threw on 21 Bridges, an actually good movie about crooked cops. Starting to wonder why I have this Hulu account. What is going on with Bruce Willis nowadays?
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It's not surprising that the woman who's married to the producer (Lala Kent) has more screentime than either of the two leads despite being a awful actress.
@@FilmBrain The article you shared was very interesting given the genuine disgust some of the crew of this film had [including the director and Lala Kent] towards EFO and others for exploiting Wilis for these films.
It is sad that there is an entire industry of movies that are made with such low budgets with the expectation that they will be so bad and only exist to be played enough based on the brand of a lead character, that they will make enough profit to make more crap movies. It is the epitome of cynicism and American waste. I see the excuses by the crew on here regarding Covid, but you could have had months to shoot this film and it would still have been less than mediocre. You can wrap a crap scrip with a nice bow, but it is still crap in the end. It is sad that there are actually great movies out there that will never get made and then a producer is given the opportunity and honor to make a film and this is what they come up with. I have no sympathy for this movie team. The first film Robert Rodrigez made was a million times more entertaining and had a coherant story with a fraction of the budget of this POS.
