High concept that goes nowhere. There were a few plusses: Nick Cage as a trained killer is always fun. The little girl was suitably cute. The script featured good grammar and complete sentences.
Otherwise, the by-the-numbers script was unrelentingly pointless, predictable, and dull. The direction was about the level I'd expect from an average episode of "the A-Team", plus the stupid "introduce each character with a freeze-frame and their name in text", which became old and tiresome long before the little-girl hostage was born.
What really pisses me off about this one is that Ron Perlman was giving it his all, I mean, he really rose above the horrible script, until he couldn't anymore, and was let down by a stupid ending that didn't pay off anything it was building to.
In fact, I could say that about the whole movie, except none of the actors really put much into it. Ashley Greene could easily have been replaced by a block of balsa wood, Grace Byers should have been given a mustache to twirl, and Real-Acting-People Jackie Earle Haley and Ernie Hudson could have been played by an A. I. trained by their previous roles. No one else had a discernible personality.
Recommended if you are high, have some junk food handy, and want to waste 103 minutes of your evening without using your brain.
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