Review: Vanquish

A reclusive and disabled retired cop (Morgan Freeman) gives a single mother (Ruby Rose) with a special set of skills (she’s a former drug courier for one thing) instructions to collect money from five different sources. In order to coerce her into doing this, Freeman has kidnapped Rose’s daughter and placed her in an undisclosed location. Patrick Muldoon plays a crooked federal agent, Julie Lott is a crooked governor.

 

The futile attempt at turning Ruby Rose into someone worth watching on screen continues with this utterly boring 2021 “John Wick” wannabe. Director George Gallo (the terrible “The Poison Rose” with John Travolta and Morgan Freeman) and co-writer Samuel Bartlett (writer-director of the Australian film “Found Footage”) there’s barely a commendable thing in it besides maybe an OK slimy turn by Patrick Muldoon, sporting the worst ponytail since James Woods in “True Believer”. Sadly, Muldoon’s character ends up largely wasted and pointless despite his solid efforts in the part. Morgan Freeman is especially hard to watch and listen to here, he looks utterly soul-crushingly bored and sounds like he’s wearing Danny Glover’s ill-fitting dentures from “Saw”. He’s not being deliberately flippant in-character here, he’s just giving no shits as an actor. The difference is obvious and sad. He’s even worse here than in “Dreamcatcher”, and that film had ‘shit weasels’ in it. Freeman played a villain expertly in 1987’s “Street Smart”, but he has failed to pull it off again ever since.

 

The best I can say for Ms. Rose is that the director is smart enough to let her use her native accent, rather than strain to speak with an American accent. She’s typically robotic nonetheless. Her attempts at swagger in particular fail because this is Rose’s first day pretending to be human. I don’t understand how someone with no talent or charisma manages to get work in films and on TV. Rose isn’t an actress, she’s just a ‘look’. She’s an image or a pose, a cosmetics poster image perhaps. As a director, Gallo seems to have come from the Roger Christian (“Battlefield Earth”) school of awful, in-your-face direction. It looks so awful that you’d swear it was a Steven Seagal vehicle from the early-to-mid 2000s.

 

Terrible, badly made, mostly badly acted action film with zero excitement or energy. Frankly depressing, and the action is completely lifeless. 

 

Rating: D

 

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