★★
“Dumb and dumber: the home invasion”
After her father is killed, Shaun (Union – yes, I know “Shaun” is an odd name for a woman) heads to the remote home Dad owned in the country, with her two young children, to clear it out. Unfortunately, she crosses paths there with Eddie (Burke) and his gang of three thugs. They are at the house, in the belief there’s a safe which contains a large quantity of money. Shaun and family represent an unwelcome interruption, because they’re on a strict schedule, before the security company makes it out to investigate their disabling of the phone lines. The thugs take the kids hostage, with Shaun stuck outside the very secure home. Fortunately, she has taken a hostage of her own – the safe-cracker Eddie brought along.
This initially makes for a somewhat interesting twist on the usual scenario: rather than being trapped inside and trying to get out, the heroine needs, as the title suggests, to break into the building. And the “mother bear seeking to defend her cubs” motif is always a good foundation. Unfortunately, there hasn’t been nearly enough effort put into the scenario past that point. In particular, both sides need to behave with the enhanced level of contrived idiocy necessary to the plot. If either Shaun or Eddie had acted in accordance with simple principles of common sense, this would likely have lasted no longer than 15-20 minutes. Though in Eddie’s defense, he is a razor-sharp intellect compared to his minions. I’d have a quiet word with his HR department about quality control, which is clearly not among their recruitment tools.
Everything from the basic premise on, is questionable at best. What kind of cheap-ass security company takes several hours to respond to an alert? Quite how Shaun is capable of going toe-to-toe with career criminals like Eddie and his crew is never explained, and nor is her decision not to get help, beyond vaguely hand-waving lines such as, “Moms don’t run, not when their babies are trapped in the nest.” Other dialogue includes, “I wish I could have had a Mom like you,” entirely expositional statements, e.g. “You’re a woman, alone at the mercy of strangers, and your greatest weakness is locked inside this house,” and the climactic, “You broke into the wrong house!” which for anyone, like me, who’s a fan of Tremors, will provoke sniggers more than the intended triumphant cheers.
These quotes are also a fairly accurate representation of the level of effort that we see put into the characterizations here. Thus, among Eddie’s henchmen, we get the inevitable Heavily Tattooed Latino Psychopath, as well as the Nice Guy Who Didn’t Sign Up For This. It’s all very by the numbers, and while Union does her best, the script ensures that’s not much more than coming off as a low-rent version of Halle Berry in Kidnap. Mind you, given the tagline there was “They messed with the wrong mother,” this project largely feels like it was cribbed from the same playbook. And there are certainly better movies available to steal from.
Dir: James McTeigue
Star: Gabrielle Union, Billy Burke, Richard Cabral, Levi Meaden