'Deadlock' Review: Baddie Bruce Willis gets his gun off in damp hostage rescue flick
Contains spoilers for 'Deadlock'
'Deadlock' is cliched all the way. The storyline is predictable, the cast falters and there are no prizes for predicting an end that is distinctly clear right from the start. There's promise with attention to detail, tone, and slambang action. But what it actually fails at is adding the key ingredients that make for a breezy VoD film watch. Bruce Willis rarely plays a baddie, and at this age, it is hard to take him seriously, which is probably why he gets his gun off to show that he can still terrify people.
It all starts with Willis' Ron Whitlock who's out for revenge after one of his sons is a victim of a sloppy raid. The other son is behind bars and the botched mission sees Whitlock having a master plan that can only end one way. He hijacks the Fitzgerald Hydroelectric and opens one of the gates to flood the city in a bid to get the police department that they bungled their task, and in response, the cops are just too ready to actually die rather than get the truth out and clear the surviving son's name.
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Things appear to go per plan, but there's a former ranger in Mack Karr (Patrick Muldoon) who has other ideas. He poses the only threat to Whitlock as a welder who is trying to make a living working at the dam while his wife is actually now in a relationship with the man in charge of the dam. The protagonist and the baddie don't meet until the final minutes of the film and any dialogue between the two is meaningless as the film is in a hurry to bring Whitlock's twisted run to an end.
The cast plays their bit-part roles, but it isn't enough to lend any depth to the film. Ava Paloma as Mack's estranged wife, Sophia, Michael DeVorzon as Smith, and Matthew Marsden as Boon just pop in and out of the frames as the movie just alternates between Willis and Muldoon's different approaches to the situation. 'Deadlock' does nothing to add to Willis' decorated IMDb list as one of the most prolific 90s actors and perhaps is better off making an appearance in movies that actually make him that veteran action star that he was back in the day.
We'd still recommend catching up on some Netflix flick instead of this damp squib.
'Deadlock' is available on VoD.