REVIEW: The Cold Light of Day

Technology... who needs it?! It appears that in our modern day it's what drives us forward. The latest iPad? I need to have it. The most up-to-date smart phone? I've got to have it. Digital projection in cinemas? Wow... well, I don't really need that. Why do I want to watch a DVD on the big screen when I could be watching traditional film. I can't really explain what is so different about film in the cinema or why it is so much better, but you can just tell a massive difference between film and the digital crispness of newer films. I always remember watching an original print of Poltergeist at a horror festival and it just looking so "cool" on the big screen!

The reason why I am having a moan about digital projection before I start my review is that while watching The Cold Light of Day at the cinema, the film suddenly stopped about 15 minutes in. The reason for this? Apparently the digital projector had "crashed" and that they needed to reboot it which would take about 15 minutes. What followed was some awkward sitting around and waiting, before the film came back on... right near the end of the film. So it was stopped again and then started somewhere in the middle of the film. Once again, the film was stopped and then it must have started about 10-15 minutes after where we had left it off. But this time the film was just left to play. We missed a good chunk of the film and also missed the inciting incident that drove all the action forward (we only found out what had happened through some quite awkward dialogue).

So, what I am going to attempt to do is try to review a film without having actually watched all of it. Unfair? I'll give it my best shot.

The film follows Will Shaw (Henry Cavill) who arrives in Spain for a family holiday - a family who he doesn't keep in touch with very well. When there, we find out that he has a strained relationship with his father, Martin Shaw (Bruce Willis) and spends most of his time on his phone to his struggling workplace back home. When visiting the local town, Will's family are kidnapped, and to get them back he must delve deeper into his family's secrets and deliver a mysterious briefcase to intelligence agents.

The plot is pretty straight-forward, but for an action popcorn flick, it's exactly what you want. There is some strong influences from films like James Bond and Die Hard in this film with car chases through the Spanish setting and shootouts on rooftops (which massively helps because Bruce Willis stars - will he ever truly breakout from his typecast role?!) The Spanish setting really helps add something visually to this film, it's just a shame that sometimes the shaky hand-held camera detracted us from the beautiful setting - I do understand the need for that type of camerawork though (to help add a sense of urgency to the film.) It just made me really want to go on holiday; the beaches and towns just looked amazing!

Another positive was seeing such powerhouse actors, Bruce Willis and Sigourney Weaver, appear together in the same film. While both have really been typecast in previous roles (Die Hard and Alien series respectively) it's in films like this that they can show what they can really do... well, kind of. Bruce Willis still plays his typical tough cop routine and Sigourney Weaver manages to play another tough bitch role (similar to the small cameo she had in Paul) so I guess she likes playing characters opposite to Ripley in Alien. Also, the film criminally underuses these actors together. They must have had about one or two scenes together (and we missed those, because the digital projector decided to shut down.)

One of the major issues I had with the film is that it seemed quite underdeveloped. Some of the lines of dialogue especially were written awkwardly or delivered awkwardly by the actors themselves. Henry Cavill did mostly well with his roles (although he had a couple of slippy moments), but the awkwardness was especially evident when Lucia (Veronica Echegui) has her big moment and reveals how she fits into the entire plot of the film. Firstly, there seemed to be very little emotion from the actress (do we blame her or the director, Mabrouk El Mechri?) and the lines she had to deliver were just too awkward and "on the nose". It just felt like the script needed to have a few more table read-throughs from the actors and maybe a rewrite by a fresh pair of eyes.

Overall, the film delivers on the basics of being an action-packed summer no-brainer. However, it does suffer from feeling rushed/underdeveloped and being a little bit too predictable at times. I'll be generous and give the film an extra half of a star though considering we missed probably the biggest moment of the film thanks to digital film projecting...

*** / *****