Film review – Acts of Violence

My notes on Acts of Violence, out on UK DVD this week.

Your basic direct-to-DVD/download watchable macho action movie, with Bruce Willis big on the poster but not in that many scenes in one of his endless procession of world-weary thug-cop roles while simmering Cole Hauser – son of the great Wings Hauser – takes the actual lead as Deklan MacGregor, the PTSD-suffering eldest of three Cleveland Irish brothers, who corrals the other two into strapping on armour and picking up guns when his youngest bro’s affianced Mia (Melissa Bolona) sasses the wrong assholes during her hen night and gets abducted by goons in the employ of sleazy mastermind Max Livingston (Mike Epps).  Willis pops up to tell the guys not to take the law into their own hands, though he’s already disenchanted with his own desk-sitting boss, and has a few decent chat scenes with his partner (Sophia Bush) … plus one okay rooftop fight that leads to a Dirty Harryish death plunge.  Though Hauser simmers as Deklan, whose poetry-writing perturbs his social worker, the film is let down slightly by Shawn Ashmore (of the X-Men films) and Ashton Holmes as the tagalong bros … which might even be deliberate since writer Nicolas Aaron Messanatto takes an unusually ruthless approach to showing that Deklan might actually be haring off suicidally on a crusade that’ll get his loved ones imperilled or killed when he really ought to listen to the cops.  Sean Brosnan, director-star of My Father Die, has a flamboyant supporting role as an idiot girl-snatcher who keeps killing the ‘product’ with full-strength roofies or attracting the sort of attention the smooth Max doesn’t want.  Directed by Brett Donowho (5 Souls, A Haunting at Silver Falls).