White Elephant

I spent a lot of my time in the 3 sittings it took me to get through this film trying to figure out if the producers were just having a laugh with the audience or if they really missed the mark this much and were trying to be serious. This film is so abhorrently bad that you can't figure out if they are trying to Sharknado or Snakes on a Plane us, or if the people involved in the making of this film are seriously that terrible at their craft.

There are some big names in this film including Bruce Willis and John Malkovich but these two Hollywood heavyweights can do nothing to salvage whatever the hell this is supposed to be.

It is tragic that this is one of the last films that Willis ever made before retiring for medical reasons and if we think about it too much one could perhaps see his medical issues being part of the problem in this movie. His acting is extremely wooden, he rarely moves from a chair and in most of the scenes I seriously doubt that he was even in the same room as the person that he is acting opposite. He rarely appears in frame with the other person or persons in the same scene as him and the way that he responds to the dialogue that is taking place opposite him seems as though he either was unaware or didn't care about the overall theme of whatever scene was taking place.

When the other actors are speaking to Bruce, instead of seeing Bruce's face we see the back of the head of someone with a similar hairline and based on the complete lack of chemistry in any of the scenes that he is in I wouldn't be surprised if that was actually a stand in or a body double rather than it actually being Bruce Willis at all. I've been a stand in and a body double in films before and I know this happens, but rarely is it ever used when there are scenes that are meant to be dramatic exchanges between major characters.

Another thing that doesn't make any sense is the presence of Olga Kurylenko as "Vanessa" who is one of the stars of the movie and plays the role of a high-ranking police officer in the United States.

Her accent is a dead giveaway that she is clearly not American (she is Ukrainian but moved to France at 16 years old IRL) and this is evident in her rather sloppy and not American sounding voice. I can only guess that she was cast because the director wants to sleep with her or this is some sort of pro-Ukraine move to put her in the cast at all. I was reminded of the several films where Jason Statham plays the role of a grizzled American cop but didn't even make any effort whatsoever to sound American. This always kind of irks me in films because you are exceptionally unlikely to get a job as high-ranking law-enforcement in any country if you are a foreigner.

The story isn't terrible, but the screenplay and especially the script are beyond bad. It is a typical story of revenge against at a mob boss and how said mob boss starts out untouchable but is slowly defeated by one rogue operator that is inside his own team at the start. Michael Rooker plays this role as "Gabriel" and honestly, his acting is one of the only beacons of hope in this movie but even with his stellar performance the terrible dialogue is something that even Daniel Day Lewis and Anthony Hopkins would sound silly delivering.

As far as the action is concerned it is also very wonky and doesn't make a lot of sense from a strategic point of view. Without giving too much of the story away let's just say that there is a raid on a house that is one of the major turning points in the film. When a team of elite hitmen descend upon this house they come across a floor to ceiling series of windows. Instead of simply kicking the windows in they use a friggin C-4 adhesive explosive to break through the glass. Now, there is some talk about the house being built extremely strong but this is disproven long before the C-4 incident when return fire is happening towards windows on the front of the house and holes end up in the glass as well as the walls. In the same scene there is a bathroom that is described as being able to withstand any strike other than a "direct hit from artillery" yet that same room has glass and and wood and other bits flying all over the place in the firefight. Did they forget what they said in the script just a few minutes ago?

Perhaps this is nitpicky, but I get frustrated in all films when the baddies have completely absurd tactics and are basically useless and could easily be thwarted by an even somewhat competent opponent. This happens multiple times in this movie as the thugs turn up in a series of easily identified cars one after the other all from the same direction.

In one particularly hilarious oversight, there is a machine gun being used that is meant to be an ultra-powerful weapon.

I don't know what kind of weapon this is nor do I really care but I do know that in one scene it is being fed bullets by a belt-feeding system and then the next the belt is mysteriously gone and has been replaced by the circular magazine that is in the image above. A bit later it is back to belt-feed and then in the next the belt is gone. This weapon is used in at least 5 different portions without anyone changing the ammunition but it magically changes on its own. It was right around this point that I started to feel like the director and the producers might be intentionally fucking with us and that this movie is not actually meant to be good.

Bruce has been accepting roles for just about anything in the past 5 years and has been in a ton of stinkers. Therefore his presence isn't very surprising but John Malkovich is normally a bit more discerning about what he is in. I can only assume that he agreed to do this role (his is a small but equally stupid role) as a favor to his longtime friend Bruce Willis.

Should I watch it?

This might actually surprise you but I think that a certain type of person actually SHOULD watch this movie but not for the reasons that the creators probably intended. This movie is one of the worst-produced films with big names that I have ever seen in my life. I think that if you go into this film already realizing this that you can actually have a lot of fun with it. The terrible acting and worse script combined with a nonsensical string of events can be a lot of fun to the right person. Attempting to spot how many times Bruce Willis likely refused to do another take or wouldn't do his dialogue on set can be another source of amusement. I honestly believe that Bruce either couldn't or refused to be around the rest of the cast for a vast majority of this film and it is extremely evident throughout.

one of the worst movies I have ever seen and ironically enough "White Elephant" is actually a term meaning "a possession unwanted by the owner but is difficult to get rid of." I wonder if about halfway through the filming of this movie that the film itself was already determined to be terrible, but they were so close to finishing it that they just said "fuck it" and released it anyway.

Box office take for this movie was $37,000. Awesome.