Regie:
Mabrouk El MechriCamera:
Remi AdefarasinMuziek:
Lucas VidalActeurs:
Henry Cavill, Verónica Echegui, Bruce Willis, Sigourney Weaver, Joseph Mawle, Caroline Goodall, Rafi Gavron, Emma Hamilton, Roschdy Zem, Óscar Jaenada (meer)Samenvattingen(1)
De jonge Amerikaan Will Shaw's leven staat op z’n kop wanneer zijn familie tijdens een vakantie in Spanje wordt ontvoerd. In een poging hen te redden komt hij er al snel achter dat de ontvoering te maken heeft met het geheime leven van zijn vader Martin. Wat volgt is een klopjacht door de straten van Madrid, waarbij niets is wat het lijkt. (Entertainment One Benelux)
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Recensie (7)
I wanted to see this action movie. I wanted to see it mainly because of Bruce Willis and the director. But I also saw the reviews here and I said to myself that I would either enjoy this film or I would angrily rate it Boo! I enjoyed the movie, but it sucked. I enjoyed it because the actors were likable, I enjoyed how Bruce portrayed something of a loser who, and this is spoiler, is done for after ten minutes. On the other hand, the director made me mad for the inability to film this properly. The film failed at creating any suspense and mostly lacked action. And when there was some, it was bad. Too bad that Mabrouk El Mechri didn’t learn his lesson when he worked with JCVD. The action scenes there had some balls and the suspense made me bate my breath. This movie sorely lacks this fast pace.
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A routine story that shakes hands with a pile of clichés, and Mabrouk El Mechri proves that giving him an action thriller was a big mistake. It's an art to waste Bruce Willis like this, embarrass Sigourney Weaver, and suffocate all the charisma Henry Cavill usually has. 30% out of pity for the actors.
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The plot is essentially primitive and the screenwriters didn’t dress up the dialogue in any kind of wit. What’s clever and funny is how the director deals with both of these aspects. The opening minutes prepare us for a light drama set in sunny Spain, where an overworked son will try to find his way to his authoritarian father. However, the narrative quickly takes a different direction with much sharper twists and we are suddenly watching a variation on a theme that Hitchcock had already seemingly exhausted – an innocent man on the run (nevertheless, the film sticks with family as the only certainty throughout its runtime). El Mechri doesn’t embellish this popular thriller formula, offering only realistic details during the chases through the streets of Madrid (the indestructibility of some of the characters ensures that the genre-flick pleasure is of the guilty variety) and mainly constant role reversals. The deliberately exaggerated involvement of the meaning-making devices of a particular genre (family drama, action, paranoid thriller) can give the impression that we are momentarily watching a slightly different film that is supposed to evoke in us a different emotional response than was desired a few minutes prior. As they were for Hitchcock, actors are for El Mechri only tools for manipulating viewers’ emotions. As he runs from people who want to kill him or violently extract from him information that he, like us, doesn't know, Will barely has time to use the toilet and tend to his wounds (which a woman has to do at the moment of his “pacification”), let alone carry on a longer dialogue. No time remains for delving deeper into psychology, which is only for the better. Everyone so suddenly transitions from one role to another that getting to know them better would only raise needless questions about the logic of what’s going on. The film contains several scenes when the hunted becomes the hunter in the course of a few moments. The characters are neither good nor bad, just highly adaptable. This is best seen in Will, who works his way up from the position of “I don’t know anything, I don’t know anyone, I don’t speak Spanish” to the moment when a single look is enough for us to understand how different his role is now. The constant unsettling of the viewer includes eliminating the romantic storyline by effectively making it impossible, rejecting the rules of the star system and the creation of a compassionate mood at unexpected moments (in accordance with the blurred line between the villains and the heroes). All at the same time, the director toys with the characters and our expectations without detracting from the craftsmanship, though he doesn’t have as much masterful control over that as he does over the narrative, or rather over the irresistibly devious concealing and revealing of information. Thanks, however, to those two incredibly well-thought-out scenes with mirrors, I can forgive him for the chaotic nature of the action scenes. The Cold Light of Day outwardly tempts us to immediately reject it as another dull action movie, but beneath its B-movie surface, it is actually the biggest genre surprise of the year so far. 85%
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Another MacGuffin in the main role. The hero of this movie is an unlikeable asshole, Bruce disappears too soon, the action is mediocre, Lucía is needlessly loud and if it weren’t for a couple of good ideas from the screenwriters, this would have turned out a totally bland mediocre. El Mechri handled Van Damme the Philosopher much better.
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A woefully mediocre action thriller, The Cold Light of Day is interesting only thanks to its cast. There are a few interesting
screenwriting ideas in the action scenes, but they are filmed without drive or ferocity. The thriller dramaturgy is also
poor, as you don’t care about the characters. It looks like an expensive German television action film. Henry Cavill
doesn’t possess the necessary charisma of a leader and Sigourney Weaver’s role of a cold-blooded, murderous agent
would’ve been acceptable for a new, unknown actress, but not for THE Sigourney Weaver.
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