I guess the French just do this run and gun
thrilling better. I'm telling you man, all of the really
good action thrillers I've seen in the last half dozen or so
years have come from France and heck if I know why. But
I was holding out hope for this one, 'The Cold Light of Day',
for no reason in particular outside of the fact that Bruce
Willis shows up for a minute or two and is an actor who knows
a thing about action thrillers. This one was also
directed by Mabrouk El Mechri who helmed the outstanding
'JCVD', but then that wasn't an action thriller. What
I'm saying is that 'The Cold Light of Day', while certainly
passable as a marginal piece of time-wasting entertainment,
just doesn't measure up to the really good action thrillers we
seen recently. Most of which come from France. Go
figure.
Will Shaw (Henry Cavill) is one pissed off and angry young
man. Why? Hell if we know. He's young, good
looking, white, fit, well to do and he's just got off an
airplane to spend some quality vacation time with his family
while lounging on the Spanish Riviera on his dad's boat.
Oh that's right, he and his dad Martin (Willis) don't get
along. Waaah… I guess he's also gotten word that his
little business back stateside has gone bankrupt but he was
pissed off and angry long before he got that news.
So the family, which includes his mom,
his little brother and his brother's girl, are having a
goodtime, except Will of course, when his dad asks him to
something really simple like handle the boat steering
wheel. It's not called a steering wheel, but my nautical
knowledge is limited. Regardless, Will couldn't do this
one simple thing, the mast goes haywire, the girlfriend bumps
her head, dad is pissed, Will is pissed that dad
is pissed and now this movie's most important
attribute gets underway. You see, Will has to jump off
the boat and swim to shore to get some meds to treat the
girlfriends bloody forehead and here we get to see what a
great athlete Henry Cavill as he will execute almost every
conceivable athletic endeavor that a human can pull off during
this movies running time.
Anyway, Will gets back to the shore, notices the boat is gone,
swims some more for no real reason other than he can, panics
because his family is missing, sprints to the police station
for help and receives nothing but grief. Turns out his
family has been abducted, and he knows this because his dad,
not being the cultural attaché he thought he was, but instead
is a rouge CIA agent and has stolen something and these bad
people want it back or the family is dead. Simple
enough.
Dad would like to retrieve this McGuffin to save his family, I
mean he even contacted his chief handler in Jean the
government shrew (Sigourney Weaver) to help out, but she was
of very little assistance. As the situation shakes out,
it looks like it's going to be up to Will all by his lonesome
to make this thing happen and save his family, and Will is not
a kick-ass CIA agent, just a super athletic business
consultant. During his running escapades Will will meet
Lucia (Veronica Echegui) the films de-facto hottie who will
tagalong on the adventure for a little while though oddly
enough there will be no romantic involvement between the two,
even though we don't think Will is gay. Regardless, Will
Shaw will run, jump, swim, drive fast, get shot, punched,
choked out, stabbed, and he will run some more all in an
effort to save his family.
Even though 'The Cold Light of Day' is getting beat up pretty
good right now, critically speaking, I personally didn't think
it was all that bad… just run of the mill. This is a
movie that doesn't add much of anything to the genre that you
haven't seen many times over, and done much better, but at
least it is competent. It would probably help one's
enjoyment factor of this film to be a big fan Henry Cavill and
his running ability. I mean this cat got into a footrace
with a cop on horseback and won. Even Superman might
have trouble with that one.
We often chastise certain movies for being overly complicated
when simple is almost always better, but a good thriller needs
a few cleverly thrown in twists here and there and 'The Cold
Light of Day' doesn't give us any of that as it is simple and
straightforward to a fault. There is a little
misdirection tossed in, basically involving why the characters
of Will and Lucia aren't getting down, but honesty that didn't
really add any heft to the story. We also have the
occasional gaping plot hole or two, which probably shouldn't
happen in straight forward action thriller that is basically
about one dude running really fast from point A to point B
over and over again, but there they were nonetheless. So
recognizing that the contents of the mysterious case are
really unimportant in the grand scheme of things, still we are
forced to wonder why the U.S. Government is in Spain brokering
Silver Case deals with terrorist, while undercutting Mossad in
the process. I guess. Who knows. The one
time this movie tries to get slick it screws it all up.
But the truth of the matter is I didn't despise 'The Cold
Light of Day' if only because I'm easily entertained.
There are much better thrillers out there, no doubt, but we
did find this one marginally tolerable. That doesn't
sound like a ringing endorsement, but that's all we got.
