An instantly forgettable, shockingly low-budget action-thriller, Hard Kill banks on our recognition of Bruce Willis’ past career (the callback nature of the title should indicate that) and almost exactly nothing else. The plot is standard. The protagonists are types cut from cardboard. The antagonist is as dull as the rest of it, and the MacGuffin is the catalyst for some of the silliest plotting and stupidest character motivations of any movie in 2020 so far. The firefights that erupt are without style or grace, and the performances reflect the low-budget nature of what surrounds the actors. Then there’s Willis, a once-reliable presence who has mostly turned his back on the respectable part of his career to focus on roles like the one he takes here (in other words, the type that will cash him a quick paycheck).
Unsurprisingly to those who have followed this stage of his profession, Willis is neither protagonist nor antagonist in this mediocre story of a battle of wits between two meathead men who look almost exactly alike. The hero, such as he is, would be Miller (Jesse Metcalfe), a former military man who has been restless and lonely since he received a bullet in his back, courtesy of a villainous megalomaniac called “the Pardoner” (Sergio Rizzuto). His nemesis has returned, this time to acquire an ultimate weapon of some kind called “Project 725” from Donovan Chalmers, a billionaire CEO played by Willis. In order to have his leverage, the Pardoner has kidnapped Chalmers’ daughter Ava (Lala Kent), who delivered the triggering mechanism under duress.
The first of many signs of trouble comes with the plot incident itself, in which Miller and his team of operatives (Natalie Eva Marie, Swen Temmel, Jon Galanis) are lured to the warehouse that will serve as the film’s setting by Fox (Texas Battle), Miller’s old brother-in-combat, to protect Chalmers, who holds the key to unlocking the weapon. At first, it’s a trap on the part of Fox, who has promised a big payday but otherwise believes, for some godforsaken reason, that the team would only come if they knew the Pardoner and his army were already headed their way. This is a grave error on the part of screenwriters Joe Russo and Chad LaMont, who undermine any sign of intelligence in these characters by introducing us to them through their inability to see through this ruse.
If that isn’t enough, there’s the issue of the weapon. MacGuffins rarely need an explanation for their existence (if they did, they wouldn’t be MacGuffins). Most movies, though, provide some clue as to the object’s utility within the plot. Russo, LaMont and director Matt Eskandari don’t even grace us with that bare necessity, meaning that the developments of the plot—which hinges entirely upon the Pardoner’s scheme to get the weapon, Chalmers’ resistance to torture or coercion and Miller and his team’s shootouts with the villain’s operatives—are even more meaningless than they might have been in a movie exactly like this but with some context added. Everything comes down to the key to unlocking it and whether Chalmers will divulge the information to the Pardoner. It’s as predictable as you’d think.
Metcalfe grimaces a lot while shooting guns and getting into very masculine fistfights, Marie (as Miller’s righthand woman Sasha) gives a truly embarrassing performance that suggests she should’ve kept her day job with the WWE, and Rizzuto is far too bland in presence and personality to be remotely threatening as the Pardoner—whose moniker, for what it’s worth, is amusing every time it is spoken, as it sounds like the “o” is missing from the word. We return to Willis, though, whose bored turn here indicates wasted time and easily earned cash over a long weekend. His commitment level is as telling as anything else about Hard Kill, which is indeed a waste of time and money. This is stitched-together mediocrity, plain and simple.
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