Director: Brian Smrz
Writers: Ron Mita, Jim McClain
Stars: Ethan Hawke, Qing Xu, Paul Anderson
Plot: An assassin seeks redemption after being given a sec ond chance at life.
Running Time: 93 Minutes
IMDB Score: 5.7
Why I Watched It: Mostly the cast and it’s an action movie, I have simple tastes.
Random Thoughts: Some reviews are easy to write, there’s two main ones that I love movies that you either love or hate I could write for days but the hard ones are the movies that are OK and there’re some movies that I really do want to write “It was OK” as my review I don’t have any deep insights it was fine I didn’t love it or hate it I’ll forget about next week so let’s move on. You guessed right 24 Hours to Live is one of those movies. I put that here cause I’m just making the review longer.
What I Liked: I really like Ethan Hawke, he’s one of my favorite actors working today, he does every genre and he’s always present he doesn’t phone in a performance and he’s good in everything he’s in, he makes a bad movie better, a boring movie a little less so. I wish he had more to do here. This film has some good actors and really that’s what the film has going for it. It has genre God Rutger Hauer for goodness sake.
The film moves pretty well, and it’s filmed well. I told you not much to say, it’s fine. Hawke is way better than the material and he does give the film and his character more depth but he’s fighting an uphill battle here. I will say that Hawke does play an assassin and to his credit he’s not that likable a guy, he’s really a bad guy who’s trying to do one good thing.
What I Didn’t Like: The script is writing cliches 101, they hit it all here, even the ticking clock which is an actual ticking clock and yes Hawke has just 24 hours to live and the clock is in his arm. The directer Smrz throws all the right action ingredients but they just sit there, there’s no atmosphere, no energy and oddly enough no sense of tension. This is very workmanlike, nothing more, no bells and whistles. This film is a burger with a little ketchup on it.
The cast is wasted, a better scripted and a surer hand directing it and we might have gotten a decent action film but what we got was OK.
Final Thoughts: I liked Hawke, and that’s about it not bad just got memorable. This is a text book 5/10 but it could have been better.
Rating: 5/10
Movie Burner Entertainment 