911- WE NEED A SCREENWRITER
I saw the trailers on YouTube and thought, “Hey, that’s a movie I would like to see in the movies!” Well, the only problem was that this action-flic wasn’t in the theaters, it was a straight-to-streaming movie…and well…
Well….
Now, back in the day, the Blockbusters days, the VHS days, Straight-to-VHS meant that you shouldn’t expect much. A cheesy action-plot, hot women, a good laugh, and really horrible special effects. The movies were never boring, even if they were bad. There is something great about the way these cheesy movies failed – back in the day. Well, this is the 2020s, and the times have changed.
Straight-to-Streaming, the new version of Straight-to-VHS, has gotten incredibly good, and I must admit, I’m a bit spoiled. Don’t get me wrong, there are 90% of the streaming market is crap, but the 10% that is good, is really good. And this movie looked to fall into the latter category. After all, it starred that handsome dude Aaron Eckhard, and that pretty woman Nina Dobrev. Plus it was directed by Renny Harlin, the guy who I never heard of, but from the trailer, I Iearned that he directed Cliffhanger and Die Hard 2 (one of the greatest Christmas movies of all time).
Sigh…
If only trailers told the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Most movies that Renny Harlin directed were flat-out bombs. The Bricklayer was an action-movie, but the biggest bomb was literally on my TV.
This movie sucked.
But the problem goes much deeper than the director. It’s the writers.
The script sucked too.
The Bricklayer is based upon the book written by the late Noah Boyd. I didn’t read the book, but I have a really good feeling that this movie didn’t do the book justice. Matt Johnson and Marc Moss are the writers. They have pretty good list of movies they wrote between them, none of which I heard, and all of which sounds like B movies.
So, what’s wrong with the movie? Well, everything. The characters were flat, their motivations were very simplistic and not true to life. The story was simple yet ironically hard to follow. The action was okay, but not interesting. The main character, Vail, aka the Bricklayer, didn’t have too much to him, other than his name. His nickname wasn’t even “The Bricklayer” during the movie. And he didn’t do anything too special with bricks when he fought. I mean, you think with a name like “The Bricklayer” he probably got it from a reputation of killing a lot of enemies, and piling them like bricks, one at one time. Or maybe he hid a lot of bodies in the walls of monuments. Nope….none of that. The Bricklayer actually was a brick layer.
The worst part of the movie? It was boring. I mean, you don’t need much of a plot if the action is great. look at John Wick. But this movie…sucked.
Lame.
My advice. Steer clear away from this movie. Buy the book. It’s most likely better.
GRADE: F
Steve Young
