Deadlock – Film Review

Wanted criminal Ron Whitlock (Bruce Willis) leads a rogue team of mercenaries on a mission of vengeance. Convinced that the government is working against them, the merciless group brutally seizes an energy plant and holds everyone inside hostage. With a nearby town on the brink of massive flooding and destruction, it’s up to a retired Army ranger to save thousands of innocent lives before it’s too late.

Jared Cohn‘s Deadlock is the definition of a Dad Movie. It’s got practically everything they want in a movie – big badass men that shoot guns and say epic one-liners, lens flares, and a classic revenge story to boot. The big problem here is that this is essentially just a big rip-off of Die Hard in more ways than one. The story is incredibly similar (seriously, it’s kind of eerie), it’s got characters that are similar to John McClane, particularly Patrick Muldoon‘s Mack, and it even has some similarities with its villains.

All of this is made more hilarious when you consider the fact that Bruce Willis is actually in this movie, and is the secondary character. It just kind of seems as though Willis misses his Die Hard days and is practically willing to do anything to get into a film that has a similar story.

The only difference here is that, instead of portraying the badass gun-toting hero, he portrays the lead villain here, whereas Muldoon takes up the hero mantle. Sadly, the story doesn’t go in any fresh or exciting directions, and you’ll often find yourself checking your phone for the time, mainly because not a lot happens in the film.

Whenever there is a moment of intrigue, it’s simply too fleeting. Perhaps we will watch a chase scene that may feel a bit suspenseful in the moment, but as soon as you realize where it’s going, all of that excitement is sucked right out of the window. A large portion of the action scenes here feel disgustingly choppy and it can oftentimes be more than a little confusing as to what exactly is happening. The team also should have seriously chosen a different editor for the film instead of Paul Montez McDade because too many scenes feel sloppy spliced together.

And by the time the film ultimately comes to a close, you’ll feel as if you just wasted ninety-six minutes of your life that you’re never going to get back. The funny thing about Deadlock is that nothing about it is offensively bad or anything. You can watch the film and you won’t feel like you hate yourself afterward, but at the same exact time, there’s really next to nothing here that hasn’t been done before and better.

Deadlock is a hugely trope-filled and disastrously boring rip-off of Die Hard and proves that once great actor Bruce Willis will do anything to relive his glory days.