★★
“Die Hard in a hospital.”
I’m almost tempted to leave it at that, because there are points where it feels like writer Alex Wright left it at that as well. Heroine Michele (Gibson) gets down to her vest? Check. Takes a walkie-talkie off a bad guy? Check. At one point, she even lost a shoe. If she’d gone crawling through an air-duct, I’d have flipped a table. Anyway, Michele is a former military doctor, now working in a civilian hospital. Rushing in one day is an FBI agent with Ryan Quinn, son of an Irish crime family, who was shot in an ambush after agreeing to flip on his relatives. Not far behind is family boss Patrick (Voight) and Ryan’s brother, Sean (Meyers), the latter intent on finishing the job.
The resulting hostage situation unfolds more or less as you’d expect, especially after you’re introduced to Michele’s son, Bobby (Bolognese) – and wouldn’t you know it, today is his birthday! That’s one of a few moments where your eyes will be forgiven for rolling enthusiastically. I think we reached peak ocular orbital velocity when Michele heads across the hospital roof, and the cops below pause to salute her. No, really. Quite why she’s on the roof at all, escapes me, and it’s very much a case that for every step the script takes forward, it tends to take two back. The film is a bit better when simply engaging in crunchy violence, and reaches adequate levels in this department now and again.
What probably stops things from collapsing are a decent cast, who are mostly much better than the script deserves. Voight and Meyers in particular, have a very good dynamic, their relationship gradually becoming more fractured, especially after Patrick realizes it was Sean who shot Ryan. The pair are fun to watch, and in Sean we have a particularly nasty villain, with absolutely no qualms about cold-blooded murder. Even here though, the story manages to screw things up, with a ludicrous brawl between father and son. Jon Voight is eighty-four years old, people. When I reach that age, I’ll be satisfied simply to be walking without assistance, and will not be fighting anyone. Trust me.
There might be a bit less of Gibson in this than I expected, with the movie occasionally appearing to forget about her. The army background does give a solid base to explain her hand-to-hand skills: she wasn’t “just” a medic, shall we say. There’s a largely unnecessary prelude which throws in a dead husband and apparently gives Michele bomb-disposal skills, courtesy of the ghost of her husband. Ok, while I made the last bit up, it probably makes as much sense as what the finale provides. It’s the kind of film where I feel a bit sorry for the leads; I can’t help feeling they deserve better material.
Dir: Tony Dean Smith
Star: Leah Gibson, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Jon Voight, Anthony Bolognese
The film is released in select theatres on May 12, on digital May 19, and is available On Demand from June 2.