He was an arms dealer who abused his wife in an early "Miami Vice" (1984) episode, a deadly international assassin in "The Jackal" (1997), an aggressive general in "The Siege" (1998), a creepy politician in "The Perfect Stranger" (2008), an unscrupulous mob boss in "Setup" (2011), and a retired hitman in "The Prince" (2014). During his 38-year Hollywood career, Bruce Willis has played some shady characters. He pumps a few extra slugs into the detective. This doesn't elicit a shred of sympathy from the grieving Whitlock. One of the doomed detectives pleads for mercy on behalf of his wife and two kids. Actually, what neither Whitlock nor the detectives at his door know is the bust went down at the wrong residence! Meantime, before the detectives can anticipate his reaction, Whitlock whips out a pistol and shoots them both in cold blood. Apparently, during a no-knock warrant raid, the local narcs shot and killed one of Whitlock's boys and arrested the other on charges of cooking meth. Mind you, Whitlock knew about the incident because he had just seen a breaking tv news bulletin about it moments before their arrival. They came to tell him about the tragic circumstances surrounding the demise of one son and the arrest of another. The first thing Bruce's character does mere minutes into this violent melodrama is murder two plainclothes police detectives at his front door. The novelty of "Vendetta" writer & director Jared Cohn's hostage thriller "Deadlock" is the casting of Bruce Willis as the chief villain. My rating of "Deadlock" lands on a five out of ten stars. All in all, then director Jared Cohn delivered a mediocre action thriller that didn't bring anything new to the genre. There is a good amount of action in the movie, and that definitely helped make the movie watchable. The movie also had Patrick Muldoon and Matthew Marsden on the cast list, so there were some okay names to the movie. That was certainly something I enjoyed and what made "Deadlock" watchable. It was nice, though, to see Bruce Willis in a role such as Ron Whitlock in this movie. But there still was enough contents to the storyline for a single viewing. So "Deadlock" was pretty predictable and generic. Writers Cam Cannon and Jared Cohn didn't really offer much of any thrill rides, nor did they throw any curveballs for the audience. And what was it? A rather generic, but straight forward action thriller. "Deadlock" was actually watchable enough for what it was. But still, it being a movie that I hadn't already seen, of course I sat down to watch it. Why? Well, I can't claim to think that Bruce Willis really have been churning out all that great movies for quite a while by now. I have to say that when I sat down to watch the 2021 action thriller "Deadlock" from writers Cam Cannon and Jared Cohn, then I wasn't really expecting much of anything grand here. Nevertheless, I finished the film, and wasn't disappointed I watched it, especially since I had nothing better to do. The score wasn't bad, and even though the pacing was decent, the 97 min runtime could've used some trimming. Patrick Muldoon, Chris Cleveland and Ava Paloma were the only actors close to being convincing in their characters, although Douglas Matthews was on point as the comic-relief. Willis' performance was actually one of his better, in his usual monthly b-film showcase appearances. Casting and performances were ok for the most part, but very evident many actors much-needed at least some direction from Cohn. But the entire "payback" premise of the dam was far fetched and a cringeworthy attempt to piggy-back the Katrina disaster. However, the use of a hydroelectric dam as the main setting for this crime thriller was well conceived and utilized, and I'm sure helped maintain the film's low budget. Most of the dialogue will make you shake your head and/or cringe. The screenplay (jointly written by Cam Cannon and Cohn) bounced all over the place with scenes in and out of nowhere, and the first half was convoluted in the poor attempt to create some plot twists, which even when they become evident, there's many bits and pieces missing. Even the use of actual Katrina disaster clips were poorly edited in. And the flaws are so obvious, a little effort would've gone a long way. This felt like a 1980's amatuer camcorder production. It was so horribly directed in every aspect - from poorly executed scenes, transitions, and camera angles, with prop and set mistakes, massive incohesive and illogical plot and structure issues, failure to direct his cast, etc. Before I checked, I assumed this was directed by some amateur unexperienced young filmmaker - or a high school drama class, and was shocked to find out that Jared Cohn has 47 directorial credits and 20 writing credits under his belt.
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