Movie Review The Bricklayer

The Bricklayer (2024) 

Directed by Renny Harlin 

Written by Hanna Weg, Matt Johnson 

Starring Aaron Eckhardt, Nina Dobrev, Tim Blake Nelson, Clifton Collins Jr. 

Release Date January 5th, 2023 

Published January 4th, 2023 

The Bricklayer is a remarkably banal and completely terrible movie. The film stars Aaron Eckhardt as the titular bricklayer. Naturally, he's not bricklayer, not really anyway. He does lay bricks and even builds a small wall early in the movie, but his tragic backstory is soon revealed. The Bricklayer, aka Vail, lost his family when they were slaughtered by his former friend, played by Clifton Collins Jr. This caused Vail to abandon the life of a CIA spy in favor of bricks. He believes that he had killed his former friend but now he's found out that he's wrong. 

Collins' terrorist character is back and is now murdering international journalists and framing the CIA for the kills. The CIA needs Vail to come out of retirement and finish the job of killing the terrorist. Naturally, the only person the CIA could possibly team him with is an inexperienced tech wiz who can find information that the rest of the CIA can't because their lazy and jaded and she's young and beautiful. Nina Dobrev is the whippersnapper CIA agent who will pose as Vail's wife as they snoop their way inside the high society of Greece where the most recent murdered journalist was staying. 

The cliches of The Bricklayer move fast and furious. Literally, some of these were made cliche by the Fast and Furious movies. Aside from a hero who enjoys the trade of bricklaying, there is nothing remotely original about The Bricklayer. I mean everything, right down to star Aaron Eckhardt's raspy tough guy speaking voice. In one of the first scenes in the movie, Eckhardt is shot by one of those bad guys who rarely hits anything while firing a needless number of bullets. So, Eckhardt duct tapes his gunshot would shut, and engages in a hand-to-hand fight that would put most MMA fights to shame. 

Read my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Movie Review: Exorcist The Beginning

Exoricist The Beginning (2004) 

Directed by Renny Harlin 

Written by Alexi Hawley 

Starring Stellan Skarsgard, James D'arcy, Izabella Scorupco 

Release Date August 20th, 2004 

Published August 21st, 2004 

Let me begin this review with a confession. Readers of my columns already know that I have written frequently about the troubles plaguing The Exorcist film series. I have been quite critical of the film’s producers for jettisoning director Paul Schrader in favor of Renny Harlin because they felt Schrader did not deliver the kind of disgusting gore they had requested. Schrader's shabby treatment is a shadow over this film and until his finished version is released on DVD, that demon cannot be 'exorcised'.

With that out the way and my bias clearly in the open, we can discuss this highly unusual and tragically awful film Exorcist: The Beginning.

Father Lancaster Merrin (Stellan Skarsgard) is famous for having saved the life of young Regan McNeil in 1971's The Exorcist but he was not always a priest. In the 1950's, he was just another archaeologist digging up fossils in British-controlled North Africa. Merrin's days are spent drinking and nights spent tormented by memories of the time when he lost his faith in God. One day as Merrin is drinking, he is visited by a representative of the British government requesting that he take part in an archaeological dig that has uncovered an ancient church buried beneath the desert.

It is clear that Merrin's expertise as both a priest and archaeologist are what are being requested and Merrin is insistent that he no longer has religion in his life. Still his curiosity is piqued and soon he is off to the desert where the natives are restlessly and warily uncovering one of the most unusual finds in history. It is a church buried beneath the desert. On the dig, Merrin is joined by a priest from the Vatican, Father Francis (James D'arcy) who is to track Merrin's progress and report back to Rome, something Merrin is unhappy about. Father Francis believes this church may be the place where Lucifer fell.

Merrin is not there long before strange things begin happening. Villagers are falling ill, Hyena's are circling the camp and becoming increasingly aggressive. Eventually a young boy named Joseph (Remy Sweeney) is taken ill and the camp physician Doctor Sarah (Isabella Scorupco) can't find what is wrong with him. The villagers believe the boy is possessed and want to sacrifice him. It's up to Merrin and Sarah to protect him and eventually they will try and save him, exorcising him with the help of Father D'arcy. From there the film has a twist so mind-blowingly ridiculous it's worth the price of admission. Laughable is the best way to describe it. Campy kitsch. So funny I could almost recommend it, if you didn't have to sit through the rest of the film to get to it

Exorcist: The Beginning may sound like a straightforward story of one man's struggle with his faith and his spiritual reclamation but as directed by Renny Harlin it is a shrill, stupid horror cliche of bad twists and an insatiable lust for gore. The reason director Paul Schrader was dismissed and the film entirely reshot was that it wasn't gory enough for producer James G. Robinson. Renny Harlin made certain he did not make the same mistake and in so doing ratcheted the gore factor to an extreme that would make the most twisted imagination wince.

There are babies stillborn covered in maggots, fields of crucified bodies hanging from upside down crosses, and the most hacky of screen cliches, the child-in-danger manipulation. Numerous children, including the film’s lead child actor are placed in serious jeopardy and Harlin has the gall to portray the children’s murders without cutaways, something akin to child abuse for the young actors forced to fake their gory deaths.

Subtlety has never been Mr. Harlin's strong point, he famously failed spectacularly with Cutthroat Island, Driven and Deep Blue Sea. If you thought Mr. Harlin's special effects work in Deep Blue Sea was bad, wait till you see the horrendous CGI abortion he performs in this film. From bad CGI smoke in the film’s opening scenes to CGI Hyenas with glowing cartoon eyes to a makeup job in the film’s final moments that is something only Ed Wood could appreciate.

The blame for this abomination of Exorcist legend does not sit fully with Mr. Harlin. Most of the blame can be placed with producer James G. Robinson who has been quite vocal about his hands on approach to producing. He was rumored to have considered directing the film himself after firing Paul Schrader before settling on Renny Harlin. Mr. Robinson's hands on approach may be part of the reason why the film’s special effects are so bad, consider the film was finished just days before prints of the film had to be shipped to theaters. A producer’s decision no doubt. Delaying the film any further would push it out of it's comfy August release, a dumping ground for Hollywood's end of summer dregs.

Mr. Robinson's hands on approach has been seen on a number of his prestigious productions like Major League: Back To The Minors, Juwanna Mann and most horrifyingly alongside Director Paul WS Anderson on Soldier. While Anderson has taken most of the blame on Soldier, maybe there should be some revision of that legendary Hollywood story of how such a prized script was turned into such a bad movie to make room for Mr. Robinson.

I have been quite hard on this film and it deserves it. I have been hard on producer James G. Robinson and I think he deserves it as well (did I mention he produced Chill Factor? Sorry, distracted again). Mr. Robinson has a chance to prove me wrong when he releases Director Paul Schrader's version of Exorcist: The Beginning on DVD later this year. He has promised to release both films so that comparisons can be made and hopefully he is a man of his word. Even if Mr. Schrader's version is as bad as the producers claim, it certainly could not be as bad as the film they did release.

Movie Review 12 Rounds

12 Rounds (2009) 

Directed by Renny Harlin

Written by Daniel Kunka 

Starring John Cena, Aiden Gillen, Ashley Scott, Steve Harris, Brian J. White 

Release Date March 27th, 2009 

Published March 27th, 2009 

There is something to say about a movie as energetic and confident as 12 Rounds. Sure, the movie is by few standards a good movie. The plotting is laughable, the performances are wooden, and the screenplay may have been assembled by monkey's with blenders, but the action is kinetic and attention grabbing. Most interestingly, the star is professional wrestling star John Cena, arguably one of the biggest stars on television at the moment. 

WWE superstar John Cena is the star of 12 Rounds as Danny Fischer, a New Orleans police officer about to stumble on a career making bust. He happens to be in the right place at the right moment to bust an international arms dealer, and all around dirt bag named Miles Jackson (Aiden Gillen). Unfortunately, during the bust Jackson's beloved gal Friday is accidentally killed and the baddie vows revenge on Danny.

One year later, Danny and his partner Hank (Brian White) have made detectives thanks to their big bust but they aren't prepared when Miles escapes from federal custody. Soon after his escape, Mile has kidnapped Danny's beloved girlfriend, Molly (Ashley Scott), and has crafted an elaborate series of challenges for Danny to overcome in order to win her safe return. You could say he has 12 Rounds in this fight in order to save his beloved from a cackling mad man bent on revenge. 

12 Rounds of challenges, in fact, that will have Danny racing about like a maniac fighting fires, stealing cars, and rescuing innocent civilians caught unaware that an international arms dealer has made them pawns in an overly complicated revenge scheme. To say that 12 Rounds is derivative of Die Hard and about a dozen other similar trope heavy action flicks would be an understatement. Aside from John Cena's confidently amateurish performance, 12 Rounds would have nothing going for it that wasn't based on nostalgia for the movies that director Renny Harlin is blatantly ripping off. 

If all of this sounds pretty goofball, well it is. It is goofy and that's ok. That really is what 12 Rounds should be. To attempt to take seriously a movie starring a former WWE champion, whose name isn't Dwayne Johnson, and is directed by schlockmeister Renny Harlin, is a fool's errand. 12 Rounds is silly and perhaps not even silly enough. The film is a little up its own backside in the notion of what we are asked to buy into, but with a bar set so low it's more dimwitted than it is egregious or wholly unwatchable. 

The makers of 12 Rounds know they are not making Shakespeare here, they are barely recreating the glory years of Sly Stallone. Renny Harlin and John Cena fully accept their place in the filmmaking world and that gives 12 Rounds a freewheeling air that is almost cheesy enough to be fun. ALMOST. Sadly, the film overstays its welcome by a good 20 minutes or so and by the time that the big helicopter set finale arrives, the cheese has gone cold. 12 Rounds is a bad movie that sadly fails to transcend into full camp potential. Minus that, it's just merely bad and therefore not something I can fully endorse.

Can John Cena act? By the evidence of his first starring role, no, not really, he's got a lot to learn. That said, Cena appears very confident. Cena radiates confidence, not arrogance, genuine confidence. Cena has self-assurance even as he's trapped in a derivative idiot plot. He's giving this role his all and he has an energy to match the intended spirit of 12 Rounds, if not the actual, dreary, final product of 12 Rounds.