Cross (2011 Video)
1/10
What a shameful waste of talent!
18 January 2013
I did think Cross had potential to be a watchable movie. The cast on paper are reason enough to make that so. But in the end Cross was a terrible movie with equally terrible execution. You'd think with a cast as good as this that they'd be solid at least, but watching it until the end(yes somehow I managed to see the whole thing) my biggest gripe of many was "talk about wasted talent". Brian Austin Green is decent, and Michael Clarke Duncan is a believable crime boss. Compared to the rest of the cast though, who were dire overall to put it politely, their performances are not enough to save it sadly. But they are not entirely to blame as they did deserve much better than this.

The worst case was Vinnie Jones, who I didn't buy for one second whatsoever as an immortal god and it looks as though he forgot his acting skills(which admittedly were limited to begin with). Either Tom Sizemore was drunk or ill because not only did he give the impression he was reading from a cue card he looked and sounded awful throughout. Thomas C.Howell- no stranger to bad movies himself actually- is underused, Jake Busey is out of place with one-liners that were ridiculously over-the-top and had no point being there and Danny Trejo's role was so brief that you actually question was he in this movie at all.

But it wasn't just the acting that made Cross such a painful missed opportunity. The story also deserves a large part of the blame. It's often ridiculous(too much to try to suspend any kind of disbelief), under-develops any plot strands and the characters and ends up predictable and confused. It also doesn't seem to know what it wanted to be or who to aim at. Too violent to appeal to a younger audience and too dumbed down for an adult. To make it more even and such, I think they should have left in the action parts, yet they should have been much edgier as everything felt too sloppy, but cut out or at least matured the humour.

As said, the script is too dumb and cheesy to take remotely seriously, Jones' dialogue was also irritatingly repetitive. I did get that vibe that it wasn't supposed to be, but later on I got another that indicated that it was trying to be the exact opposite. The music score is bland and doesn't fit the movie, the action is sloppily choreographed and executed and pacing-wise there doesn't seem to be any kind of life sometimes. Along with the acting and the story, the production values was also a huge problem. Cross actually looks as though it was edited on a bacon slicer and to say the special effects are bad is an understatement. I think Cross could have easily done without the effects, but even then I don't think it'd stop the movie from being as bas as it was.

Overall, a terribly executed movie that shamefully wastes its cast. If I were to be honest, I found reading the increasingly ignorant positive reviews much more entertaining. By all means, go ahead and like the movie, I'm not going to judge or stop you, but at least learn the difference between fact and opinion before attacking those who on the most part have legitimate reasons for hating Cross. 1/10 for Green and Duncan. Bethany Cox
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