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Movie:		4.0
Picture:		6.0
Sound:		6.0
Extras:		3.0
Score:		5.0

Director(s):	Tony Giglio
Writer(s):	Tony Giglio
Starring:	Jason Statham • Justine Waddell • Nicholas Lea • Ryan Phillipe • Wesley Snipes
Genre:	Crime
Website:	http://www.tfmdistribution.com/
Release Date:	August 11, 2009
Rated:

List Price:	Blu-ray - $12.99
Amazon:

While the big names above the title might suggest an a high-octane cops and robbers caper with intelligent plotting and pounding action, you would do well not to be fooled. Shot on the down slope of Wesley Snipes’s career, prior to the upswing of Jason Statham’s, and well into the wilderness of Ryan Phillippe’s, this shockingly lackluster thriller from writer/director Tony Giglio (the man who brought us Soccer Dog) is plodding, predictable, and oh so very boring.

The timing of this project is likely crucial to its blundering inability to resonate on pretty much any level as an engaging thriller. Snipes was neck deep in a legal dispute with New Line (the IRS was still to come) over the debacle that was Blade: Trinity, Phillippe’s marriage to Reese Witherspoon was imploding (the couple would file for divorce a year later), and Statham, who had yet to break big with Transporter 2 was spinning his metaphorical career wheels (seen guy Ritchie’s Revolver?). The result? Three guys (one too many for a maverick cop vs master crook showdown) with absolutely zero chemistry whom, for one reason or another, look like they would rather be absolutely anywhere else.

Liberally poaching ideas from other, better cop movies (a little from Cop Land, a little from Die Hard With a Vengeance, a little from Inside Man) and riddling the script with tired archtypes, Giglio’s script is not intelligent enough to work effectively as a thriller and too preoccupied with misdirection and clever plot twists (which are anything but) to generate much in the way of action. Statham stars as the prickly Seattle detective Quentin Connors, disgraced and serving suspension after a botched hostage rescue on a bridge. After a slick crew, led by the supercool Snipes, takes over a bank and locks the place down Connors is back on the job as the robbers will only deal with him (yawn); Connors, meanwhile, is saddled with buttoned down Det. Shane Dekker (Phillippe) – who has something to prove, naturally – as his watchdog.

With SWAT locked, cocked, and ready to rock, a massive explosion rocks the bank, the hostages come pouring out and the robbers slink away in the confusion. Stranger still, they didn’t appear to steal anything. What were they doing there? What does it all mean?

Very little as it turns out, certainly nothing worth coughing up two hours of your time for. As evidenced by Giglio’s tired set-up, the man never met a cliché he didn’t like, and while Dekker and Connors are of course ready to punch each other they soon develop an unspoken mutual respect. Sadly that’s about the only thing unspoken as, rather than immerse us headfirst in an enticing investigation, Giglio takes every opportunity to slow things down to a crawl so Connors can bleet on about how the department hung him out to dry and Dekker can hash out his daddy issues. Somewhere on the fringes hover Nicholas Lea and Justine Weddall as detectives also working the case, who are given virtually nothing to contribute beyond Wendall fawning all over Connors. Soon enough we’re neck deep in crooked cops, missing evidence, and all things point to an inside job. Woo, and indeed, hoo.

As the mastermind behind the whole operation, given to taunting police with enigmatic phone messages, Snipes literally does phone it in for most of the movie, offering up a cookie cutter baddie prone to spouting pseudo-intellectual nonsense about the harmonic nature of cause and effect (if you haven’t guessed, the theme of the movie is chaos theory, but you’ll be buggered if you can make sense of any of it). The inevitable twist is shockingly lazy, obvious for a good half an hour before the big reveal, and about as satisfying a payoff as a fully clothed lap dance. Just as a general rule, if the climax to your taut, tightly interwoven thriller is a phone conversation, and your movie isn’t called Silence of the Lambs, then it needs another pass. Oh, and to hear Jason Statham’s American accent is to understand pain.

DVD Bonus Features

Sparse extras comprise only a commentary from writer/director Tony Giglio, which is every bit as boring as his film. Also a featurette detailing the finer points of making and developing Chaos Theory, in which the cast and crew desperately attempt to feign interest.