Its meh at best

Bruce Willis will never be remembered most for his serial killer thrillers, and that’s all for the best. He only did two (I think); “Color of Night” which was so atrocious it actually makes “Striking Distance” look like “Silence of the Lambs”. It’s not, of course. Not by a long shot. It comes from Rowdy Herrington, who should have stayed with the pummeling and fisticuffs of “Roadhouse” territory.


Willis plays Tom Hardy, a homicide cop who seems to come from a whole family of Pittsburgh cops. He’s about to have a bad weekend, what with being the new black sheep of the force after being forced to testify against his old partner and cousin (Robert Pastorelli), trying to track down a serial killer going after young women, and losing his father in a chase with that very killer. Oh, also the cousin commits suicide. Writing it out, it feels like Herrington is throwing out everything and the kitchen sink to explain why Willis eventually becomes a surly mess. Two years later, he’s unhappy and drinks too much, bumped down to River Rescue where he’s given a cute new partner (Sarah Jessica Parker) who looks great in short shorts and is the antithesis of Hardy, as she goes by the book. But that very same killer from two years ago is at it again, only this time he’s hunting women Hardy knows and his other brothers in blue refuse to listen to him when he believes the killer may be a cop.


Willis does what he can here- his manic desperation and funny cynicism are usually enough to keep him watchable and he has a good cast with Parker, Tom Sizemore as his other screwier cousin, Dennis Farina as his no-nonsense Uncle, and Brion James as an asshole cop to mix it up with.


This movie has two modes though: one is ridiculous, the other is copy and paste, sometimes the two work together for a generic, stupid film. Much of the action is atrociously silly, like a rando-scene where Willis has to help free some riverboat hostages. Here’s a movie that has a another serial killer we’ve seen in a hundred other movies- the only interesting thing about him is he’s called the Red Riding Hood killer, for a phenomenally stupid reason. The movie makes half-hearted attempts at mystery by casting aspersions on Hardy, none of which we believe for a second. Equally half-hearted is the formulaic way Parker’s characterization plays out- everything from her being a love interest to also having a secret revealed later seems to do so only because the script requires it and even then there are major questions. Then of course there’s the ending, which is baffling and seems to keep to the cliche that serial killers are superhuman and it takes a couple tries to kill them. The one good thing Herrington comes up with is setting the film on the water, so at least we can get a pretty decent boat chase ending. Otherwise this one drowns under cliche, stupidity, and mundane execution.