Instinct Is His Greatest Weapon
Rating: 4/10
Running Time: 93 minutes
US Certificate: PG-13 UK Certificate: 12A
An annoyingly rich and successful family – including Wall Street trader Will (Cavill) and his girlfriend (Hamilton), business consultant Dad (Willis) and Mum (Goodall) – go on a sailing holiday to Spain which is irritatingly ruined when Will’s family goes missing. Instead of claiming on the insurance, Will reports the possible kidnapping to the police but just gets in more trouble and then the poor guy finds out that his Papa isn’t who he seemed to be. First one to guess the actual profession of Bruce ‘I never leave home without a gun and a law-enforcement badge’ Willis gets a lollypop.
With many failed flourishes and all the how-to-make-a-successful-thriller boxes ticked, Mabrouk El Mechri’s movie has basically managed to create a vastly inferior Bourne installment. It has too many implausilbe moments that take away its credibility, ridiculous action scenes and a really amateur plot that gives us an incredibly poor twist at the end and a complete lack of tension. Poorly written and poorly directed.
As he often does, Brucie carries the film for the first section and you think the movie might just pull through but unfortunately he’s not Superman. Unlike Brit Henry Cavill who will be the Man of Steel in 2013 and his American accent stands up perfectly here to do his Yankee credentials no harm at all. Sigorney Weaver on the other hand is shockingly poor and turns a supposedly intelligent character into one that’s seemingly high on ketamine. But the acting is far from the worst thing about this movie.
It has such a forgettable feel that in-between writing the first word of this review and now I feel like The Cold Light of Day has already been wiped from the annals of history.
It's Got: A mixed bag of acting, a nice boat
It Needs: Better plot and dialogue, less ridicuolous scenes, some credibility
Summary
It’s got all the right ingedients for a successful thriller but unfortunately all the ingredients have came from a compost heap frequented by two girls with a cup.