Val Kilmer is awful in this movie. Seriously, seriously awful. Like, starts annoying, goes out the other side to hilarious, and then works its way all the way back to annoying. He’s trying to do this emotionless bad-ass type thing and utterly failing. Just terrible. Unfortunately, Val Kilmer is the main character of the movie. Without Kilmer, this might actually have been a fairly decent little David Mamet movie (much like Mamet’s film from this year Redbelt, which was pretty darn good, although nothing particularly memorable). The basic premise of the movie is nothing special: president’s daughter kidnapped, super agent (played horrifically by Val Kilmer) sent after her. However, Mamet does a pretty good job with this tired premise. Mainly, by focusing entirely on the perspective of the (incredibly poorly acted) Val Kilmer character. There’s no “meta” level meetings with top brass, you never even see the president, etc… On top of that, the actual direction is good (very minimalist or, ahem, spartan), the supporting cast is decent, good dialogue (duh)…. Overall, it’s a competent, decent little thriller. Oh, there are some weird moments (mostly courtesy of Val Kilmer’s extreme suckiness factor), like the scene where one of Kilmer’s proteges is killed and he goes nuts calling her baby even though there’s no hint of a romance between them before that (and he’s extremely unemotional when others are killed). This scene is, of course, made even more ridiculous by the EXTREME SHITTINESS of Val Kilmer’s acting. Oh and the end, the final line of the movie? Awful, simply awful…guess who delivers it?
I can not in good conscience recommend this movie. You can’t even just mock Kilmer’s performance for comedy value, the rest of the movie is too good for that.
Seriously, Val Kilmer, terrible
