Josh Duhamel certainly carried this film the best he could with what he had to work with, but he needed better backing to be the action lead star he deserves to be. The writing and directing was that of a 1980's amateur-hour film. Constant cheesy slow-mo shots with the most tedious cat and mouse game ever - don't even get me started on the ridiculous dialogue.
Actor turned filmmaker Sam Macaroni, who has an astonishing 89 directing credits - all mostly short films and TV movies, still hasn't learned how to properly fill in any runtime that's over an hour long. Along with the Blue Bloods series and a handful of short films writer Van B. Nguyen, they stretched out every scene to the max with little meat in the story that had long dragged out scenes and mostly unnecessary dialogue.
The action shots were all boilerplate cliched, and all the back and forth cat and mouse narrative became very annoying fast. An example is when Omar Chaparro's character Eddie wasted 5 minutes of film talking to the doctor to get Cain to remember; ok we get it, just say "get it done or else". You'll see that issue of squeezing every scene to its fullest throughout the entire normally comfortable 91 min runtime, of which felt much longer due to the lack of any real captivating narrative. And that's not including the many cheesy slow-mo's that added another wasted 10-15 mins of runtime for no reason.
It's all a boilerplate by the numbers story that's mainly filler with very little substance. All the attempts at any twists in the story were predictable and also cliched. This entire mess should've been cut down to a 1 hour TV movie length at best, if not into a short film.
The only redeeming qualities this film had was the acting, some decent action choreography by Duhamel, and an adequate score - for a B film. It was great to see the legendary Nolte, but even he needed better cast direction to speed up his slow and slurred dialogue, because one can only take so much before they start yelling "spit it out already".
Had the writer and director at least consulted a seasoned filmmaker for some much needed changes, this film would've been much more watchable. But as is, it's a very generous 5/10, all going to the underrated Duhamel for another convincing lead performance (he was a great lead in Bandit as well).
Actor turned filmmaker Sam Macaroni, who has an astonishing 89 directing credits - all mostly short films and TV movies, still hasn't learned how to properly fill in any runtime that's over an hour long. Along with the Blue Bloods series and a handful of short films writer Van B. Nguyen, they stretched out every scene to the max with little meat in the story that had long dragged out scenes and mostly unnecessary dialogue.
The action shots were all boilerplate cliched, and all the back and forth cat and mouse narrative became very annoying fast. An example is when Omar Chaparro's character Eddie wasted 5 minutes of film talking to the doctor to get Cain to remember; ok we get it, just say "get it done or else". You'll see that issue of squeezing every scene to its fullest throughout the entire normally comfortable 91 min runtime, of which felt much longer due to the lack of any real captivating narrative. And that's not including the many cheesy slow-mo's that added another wasted 10-15 mins of runtime for no reason.
It's all a boilerplate by the numbers story that's mainly filler with very little substance. All the attempts at any twists in the story were predictable and also cliched. This entire mess should've been cut down to a 1 hour TV movie length at best, if not into a short film.
The only redeeming qualities this film had was the acting, some decent action choreography by Duhamel, and an adequate score - for a B film. It was great to see the legendary Nolte, but even he needed better cast direction to speed up his slow and slurred dialogue, because one can only take so much before they start yelling "spit it out already".
Had the writer and director at least consulted a seasoned filmmaker for some much needed changes, this film would've been much more watchable. But as is, it's a very generous 5/10, all going to the underrated Duhamel for another convincing lead performance (he was a great lead in Bandit as well).