Movie Review: The Cold Light of Day

Directed by: Mabrouk El Mechri

Starring: Henry Cavill, Bruce Willis, and Sigourney Weaver

Plot: A young business man goes on vacation with his family only to find himself saving them from kidnappers.

Review:

Will Shaw is a stressed out young professional. He is on edge because his company is hemorrhaging money and might be closing up pretty soon, not to mention that the airline lost his luggage. He is supposed to be enjoying a nice family vacation on his parents’ yacht in Spain. His mother, brother, and the brother’s fiancé are very happy to see him, but his father is ever the cranky pants. Will tries to keep his financial woes underwraps so to not ruin everyone’s good times, but he is wearing that stress on his sleeve. His father senses it and ends up poking at him a little too much. This causes him to stray from the family only to return finding the boat torn to shreds and his family missing.

Will Shaw might not be your usual action hero. He’s not a cop or soldier or spy or even in a profession that relies on athletic prowess. But he does look like an action hero being played by Henry Cavill who will be seen next as the man of steel, Superman. I have never seen Cavill in action, and he was technically the only reason I decided to watch this movie. As the main character, Cavill gives 110%. In the action scenes, he doesn’t seem all that out of place. He plays the stupefied average joe facing unbelievable circumstances pretty well. That is, as long as he didn’t have to deal with really extreme emotions like sadness and anger. It doesn’t matter though since the rest of the movie isn’t all that great.

Part of me had some high hopes, afterall, Bruce Willis and Sigourney Weaver are part of his supporting cast. Bruce Willis plays Cavill’s father. He is thought to be a travelling salesman or something. Something that takes him all over the world. That is code for spy. Willis is actually a CIA agent. He is in possession of some information that the kidnappers want. Sigourney Weaver is playing Bruce Willis’ boss at the agency. Both of them sleepwalk through their small screen time. You have to wonder what tricked them into the movie or sent them off the deep end that they decide to not even pretend to want to be there. It is even worse that Willis’ other “don’t-want-to-be-here” performance from Cop Out.

The action scenes are slick and nice to look at. Usually in these movies, Will Shaw would have a special skill, training, or secret that would make him key to saving the day, but the only skill he has is the superhuman ability to not get himself killed when dealing with all of these trained and experienced killers. This takes out almost all the danger from the action scenes and the charm from the average joe plot.

I never had high hopes for this movie, but I still had a grain of hope that it may end up being surprisingly decent. At least Henry Cavill seemed ok. At the very least, he was trying.

Rating: 2/10