Review by Chris Kennison
I’m not sure I can explain "The Cold Light of Day", not knowing the inside story as to why the movie was made or how it was made with the likes of Bruce Willis and Sigourney Weaver. I do know that the lead actor in the film is Henry Cavill, who will soon be playing the lead role in the Superman movie "Man of Steel". As far as Bruce Willis and Sigourney Weaver go, this is what they call in the business, a paycheck or favor movie. As far as Cavill goes, my only assumption is that the studio, Warner Brothers, wanted to get Cavill’s face out there before "Man of Steel" happened. I’m not sure "The Cold Light of Day" did them any favors.
Cavill, I’m sure is a fine actor, but given the material here, he is an after thought in the midst of poor filming, poor direction, poor scripting and just an overall train wreck of a film. Cavill plays Will, a small business owner who goes on vacation to see his family in Madrid, all the while receiving phone calls galore about his business sliding into bankruptcy back home. This is just one of the pointless and irrelevant plot points.
After accidentally tackling his brother’s girlfriend on the boat and knocking her head into a railing, he decides to go to town for some pointless reason. I think it was to get ointment for the gash on her head. So, he dives into the water and swims to shore, leaving his family behind. When he returns, the family boat is gone and the spy, terrorist thriller begins. At this point, he looks out into the straight where his family boat should be, from the beach and sees nothing. Then we have to endure a ridiculous long pan from his view across a bunch of people and eventually the camera lands on Will’s stunned face after what had to be a twenty second shot. After about five seconds, I sighed, as we endure another ten seconds of irrelevant stuff. This is the kind of stuff that plagues the film.
Moments later, as the "Taken", "Bourne Legacy" wannabe film goes into full swing, we have to endure a four or five minute scene with terrible lighting. There are scenes in the film where all of a sudden, Will is just somewhere. We don’t know how he got there or why he got there, but of course moments later, he was supposed to be there.
The scripting is terrible. Will, at one-point yells to a man at the American embassy, "My families missing and I’m wanted for a murder I didn’t commit!"
I don’t know what "The Cold Light of Day" was intended to be. Was it a vehicle for Cavill so that people could see his face before "Man of Steel"? Was it intended to be good or was it thrown together. I’m not sure, but the bottom line is, the movie was terribly done. There are too many characters and there are too many things that don’t matter. There are unreasonable plateau’s between Will meeting people and them helping or hurting him. Bottom line, just because a movie has Bruce Willis in it, doesn’t mean its good. Willis did do "Hudson Hawk" after all.