MARAUDERS
(director: Steven C. Miller; screenwriters: Chris Silvertson/Michael Cody; cinematographer: Brandon Cox ; editor: Vincent Tabaillon; music: Ryan Dodson; cast: Bruce Willis (Hubert), Christopher Meloni (Montgomery), Dave Bautista (Stockwell ), Johnathon Schaech (Mims), Adrian Grenier (Wells), Lydia Hull (Agent Chase), Tyler Jon Olson (Derohan), Christopher Rob Bowen (Teegan), Richie Chance (Dagley), Chris Hill (James Jackson), Texas Battle (T.J Jackson), Tara Holt (Vanessa Adler); Runtime: 107; MPAA Rating: R; producers: Randall Emmett, George Furla, Joshua Harris, Rosie Charbonneau, Mark Stewart; Lionsgate; 2016)
“A muddled VOD mediocre bank-robbery thriller that never adds up even when everything is tallied at the end and all the pieces fall into place.”
Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz
A muddled VOD mediocre bank-robbery thriller that never adds up even when everything is tallied at the end and all the pieces fall into place. It’s enigmatically directed by veteran B-movie filmmaker Steven C. Miller(“Submerged”/”Silent Night”) and co-written by Chris Silvertson and Michael Cody as if they were trying to write the most complex script ever for a crime drama B-film without having an idea about where the narrative was going.
Bruce Willis plays Mr. Hubert, a powerful Cincinnati banker who always looks glum or confused (probably wondering what this horseshit story is about and why he’s telling us some crap about a spider crawling up the bank’s glass wall).
Two of Hubert’s over a thousand branches are robbed. In one bank for over 3 million dollars and in the other the safety deposit vaults are robbed. Both heists are done by a military-like swat-team donning Kevlar-masks and using computerized watches to be in synch. In the robberies, they unnecessarily kill a bank manager in one bank and a security guard in the other. In charge of the investigation is a gruff widowed FBI agent named Montgomery (Christopher Meloni, TV’s Law and Order actor), who is confused when a fingerprint clue of a dead man, a former Army Ranger, is found at the crime scene.
It’s dropped on us that Hubert’s scholarly younger brother was mysteriously assassinated a few years ago and that Montgomery’s undercover agent wife was tortured to death during a sting operation.
We are further led to believe that Hubert is some kind of devious crook who the bank robbers, former Special Forces soldiers, are seeking out for revenge. This is conveyed to us as we learn there was this rogue platoon of U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan who were involved somehow in the death of Hubert’s younger brother.
The supporting cast all give overblown and unconvincing performances. They include a possibly corrupt local homicide cop named Mims (Johnathon Schaech) and a questionable fresh-faced rookie FBI agent named Wells (Adrian Grenier), assigned by Montgomery to babysit Mims.
REVIEWED ON 4/3/2017 GRADE: C+