Paradise City (2022)
Directed by Chuck Russell
Written by Corey Large, Edward John Drake, Chuck Russell
Starring John Travolta, Bruce Willis, Stephen Dorff, Blake Jenner
Release Date November 11th, 2022
Published November 9th, 2022
The effort that Director Chuck Russell puts into not putting John Travolta and Bruce Willis on screen together, despite their being co-stars in the new movie Paradise City, might have been better used to make a good movie. But, that's just wishful thinking. No, instead of bothering to make a good movie, Russell spends loads of time creating scenarios that led to his stars never sharing the screen at the same time. Why? Who knows. I'm not familiar with whether or not there is some issue between Willis and Travolta.
All I do know is that they have a scene in the movie Paradise City where Travolta and Willis's characters, a wanted international criminal who underwent serious facial reconstruction, and the world's greatest bounty hunter respectively, are supposed to be sitting in a restaurant together. It's a flashback to an important face to face showdown that is edited to have only given us a vague sense that perhaps the two stars had been in the same room at the same time.
The... inelegant, to the be charitable, camera and editing gymnastics that keep Travolta and Willis from having to breathe the same air in the same room are the most notable thing about Paradise City. Like me, if you waste your time watching this Z-Grade thriller you will spend most of that time wondering why Travolta and Willis never share the screen, even when their characters are supposed to be in the same room having an important confrontation.
The movie opens with Bruce Willis in a car racing along some Hawaiian roadway. He crashes and retrieves a hooded figure from the trunk. He drags this hooded figure to the beach and waits for the people chasing him to come along. He tries to reason with, what appear to be corrupt members of law enforcement, Willis' go-to late in career villains, before he's forced to release his hostage and is subsequently brought down in a hale of bullets.
The hooded prisoner is Travolta but we only find that out later when we see the aftermath of the shooting, Willis's bounty hunter miraculously survives, and with Willis fully out of frame and dying in the ocean, the hood comes off to reveal Travolta. Again, I don't know if there is some kind of beef between Willis and Travolta, it's just this weird choice the movie made. Perhaps they could save money by shooting their most expensive cast members separately, that seems logical, but regardless, it's deeply distracting and with the remaining cast headed up by Blake Jenner and Dollar Store Christian Slater impersonator, Stephen Dorff, it's easy to get distracted.
Click here for my full length review of Paradise City at Geeks.Media.
