Deadlock movie review: Bruce Willis plays villain without impact in unimaginative Die Hard knock-off

Language: English This awards season, Bruce Willis is up for a trophy. He has been nominated at the Razzies in the exclusively-created category of Worst Performance By Bruce Willis In A 2021 Movie. In the fray are all eight films the Hollywood veteran released last year, including Deadlock, so he is a sureshot ‘winner.’ And if you are a Willis fan feeling let down by the situation, consider this: The actor has already locked eight films for 2022, with another three lined up for next year so far. It is important to note that aspect to understand where the actor is coming from with his new film. Clearly, quality of work or impact at box office are no longer important for Willis, once counted among the biggest stars in Hollywood. The cold fact above would work as a quick review of Deadlock as well, besides underlining his new career strategy: When the offers dry up, flood the marquee with whatever project you can lay hands on and stay in the limelight. Deadlock is just one among Willis’ many recent sub-par releases to that end. Watching the B-movie action drama unfold in the film, an obvious question springs to mind. Is Willis out to do a Charles Bronson or Chuck Norris at this stage of his career? These stars made a career scoring with second-string actioners. Deadlock belongs to the category but Willis’ role in the film reminds again that the superstar of yore on his own is no longer saleable enough as a hero — not even in a B-movie production. Deadlock is a Die Hard knock-off but at 66, Willis probably seemed over the hill to reprise the John McClane stereotype. So the actor settles for the villain’s job in this film. Thematically, the film does seem like a script idea that producers of the Die Hard franchise might have rejected. The action drama rehashes numerous tropes that made the Willis-starrer action series a rage over five releases spanning decades, but very little of what goes on in Deadlock reveals an ambition to regale with original thrills. The effort here was clearly never to redefine genre basics of Hollywood action. Rather, the game plan is evident: The action movie has a ready fan base anywhere in the world, so put together an identifiable face on the poster with an excuse of a script that allows set-piece violence within a tight budget. There are bound to be takers somewhere. That idea becomes all the more obvious when you note Jared Cohn’s name as director in the credits. Cohn’s directorial career of little over a decade stands out for his many collaborations with The Asylum, the Hollywood indie film company that thrives on low-budget, direct-to-video productions. A highlight of Cohn’s films is the way he scores playing around with the essence of big-banner, big-budget themes, and reimagining them as So Bad It’s Good small projects — a reason he was probably signed on to direct this knock-off project. [caption id=“attachment_10469321” align=“alignnone” width=“640”]  Bruce Willis in Deadlock[/caption] In Deadlock, Cohn and co-writer Cam Cannon cast Willis as Ron Whitlock, who leads a group of terrorists to a typical course of action that every Die Hard villain has resorted to over the years. The setting here is a hydroelectric dam and power plant in Georgia. A bunch of teenage students arrive for a field trip at the plant. That is when Ron and gang break into the area, and take the workers and students as hostage. The exception is Mack Karr [played by Patrick Muldoon, trying so hard to hit John McClane mode that it shows]. Karr is a former Army Ranger and his presence amidst all the action is justified by the fact that he now works as a welder at the dam. Conveniently, and in classic Die Hard tradition, when the villains get into action, Mack happened to be unseen because he was working on a girder on the outer walls of the dam. The formulaic hostage setting apart, there are several stock situations that could remind you of the Die Hard films. Like the cabbie in Die Hard, the hero here gets a sidekick too, in the form of a novice security guard. There are also the inside men at the dam, to help Ron in his mission. On the other hand, Mack’s personal life tries borrowing its emotion quotient from the Die Hard films too — he shares a strained equation with ex-wife Sophia [Ava Paloma]. Cohn accommodates Sophia in the thick of action by writing the character in as one among the dam staff. The villain’s evil plan is driven by a personal tragedy. Ron threatens to drown hundreds of thousands of innocents by opening the dam floodgates unless he gets a satisfactory police explanation regarding his son’s death in a shootout.   Willis’ Ron is not all black. Rather, there is an effort to imagine him with a few redeeming features. We first find him living in a house with an American flag on the front porch, so we are to assume he is a patriot. He does not flinch while bashing up cops but is sensitive towards a pregnant captive, so he is a villain with a heart. Although there is no ideological motive behind what he does, you spot a faint commentary about police violence. It is tokenism though, and too half-baked a role to leave an impact. You give up trying to find a deeper context about Ron as an antagonist soon enough, and choose to focus on the action drama that promises to unfold.

Deadlock, however, is no Die Hard. The quota of action, meant to be the big draw of the film, is too sporadic and too unimaginatively executed to thrill.

The Die Hard template itself seems jaded and overused now — the makers of Deadlock forgot that the last of the franchise films actually had little or no impact. Cohn’s mastery at churning out low-budget winners has seen him dabble with darker genres, including horror [Hold Your Breath, Devil’s Revenge, Little Red Rotting Hood], sci-fi horror [The Horde], sci-fi monster violence [Atlantic Rim], and the erotic thriller [Bound]. However, what works generically in the realm of horror, erotica or monster movies draws far less appeal when applied to the Die Hard action mould. A thriller, even if it is packaged as a B-movie, needs an element of urgency. Deadlock is too lax in pace, too ordinarily filmed, and simply lacks that one holding performance which might have redeemed it as a commercial action entertainer of some value. For a film that keeps its runtime well below 100 minutes, Deadlock is poorly written and executed. The narrative wastes nearly 15 minutes establishing characters and plot, and then plays out like one of those films you could start or stop watching at any point and not miss out on either context or story. All through its runtime, you know exactly where the film is going and how it is all going to end. Deadlock, and every other film Bruce Willis made last year, would suggest the actor really wants to make a So Bad It’s Good flick of some sort. He seems to be forgetting a basic fact every time: Even a bad film needs some sort of an X-factor appeal to attain cult status. It is not happening with Deadlock — or, for that matter, the seven other films that might fetch him his ill-fated Razzie this year. Deadlock is streaming on Lionsgate Play. Rating: **

Vinayak Chakravorty is a senior film critic, columnist, and film journalist based in Delhi-NCR. Read all the  Latest News ,  Trending News ,  Cricket News ,  Bollywood News ,  India News  and  Entertainment News  here. Follow us on  Facebook,  Twitter and  Instagram.