Director: Steven C. Miller
Writers: Michael Cody, Chris Sivertson
Stars: Bruce Willis, Christopher Meloni, Dave Bautista
Plot: When a bank is hit by a brutal heist, all evidence points to the owner and his high-powered clients. But as a group of FBI agents dig deeper into the case – and the deadly heists continue – it becomes clear that a larger conspiracy is at play.
Running Time: 1 hour 47 minutes
Rotten Tomatoes Score: Critics 22% Audience 31%
Why I watched It: It’s a pretty good cast for a direct to DVD action movie and the trailer actually showed some promise.
Random Thoughts: Bruce Willis seems to be in the “If they money is there I do not care” part of his career, he’s still a name and he also will attract other actors who respect him or just plain what to work with him to be in his movie, the thing his he doesn’t have that spark he once had and he seems to be playing bad guys who have little screen time but the part gets him top billing. I will say this about this cast it lets some of the other actors do things they don’t do that often, Meloni is the lead here, Grenier gets to play an FBI agent and not play off his looks and Bautista plays a character that’s not solely based on his size he’s not playing a killing machine he’s just an FBI agent.
What I liked: I’ll give Marauders this the plot and the story is more layered than I was suspecting. We get some decent fleshed out characters and some decent back story. I really like Christopher Meloni, I like when a good character actor gets to play a lead, I know he’s done it on TV but he’s very good here, he has that rare gift to play tough, smart and vulnerable all at the same time. This turns out to be more of a mystery, who’s robbing the banks and why it’s not so much a straight up action film, there’s some shot outs but there’s more drama than fights and gun play here. The one thing I enjoyed is that almost every character is carrying around guilt, haunted it’s a cliche but it’s nice to see this kind of movie at least try. This film goes deep on it’s roster as even Johnathon Schaech’s character has a sub-plot and it has a payoff. Director Steven C Miller does a decent balancing act here as you can tell he’s trying to do a different kind of action film one with a little more soul and consequences.
What I didn’t like: I watch a lot of B-Movies and genre stuff and one of my big beefs is how cliched these movies are that it doesn’t seem that the people involved are even trying to do something different in the case of Marauders they might have tried to do too much, there’s twists and there’s so much backstory that it kind of bogs the film down.
I was really into the first third of the film, the bank heist scenes worked and it set up the tension and I liked some of the characters but it started to get itself up it’s own rear end, they went a little too deep and too really lost the story, by the end it seemed like a mess, some of it worked but it didn’t hang together, they tired too much in terms of story and it paid the price, it ended up different but it didn’t work and by the time we get to the finish he seemed way too forced.
Also it didn’t help that Willis doesn’t do much and really just phones it in, Grenier does try and it kind of worked but at the end he was miscast, he didn’t have the weight or the age for the role.
Final Thoughts: Not a great film but it was different and there was some things to like, I do think if you’re a genre fan or a fan of any of the leads it’s worth a watch.
Rating: 5/10
Movie Burner Entertainment 