Review: Killing Field

 

A grieving, hard-drinking widower and war veteran (Chad Michael Murray) finds himself caught in the middle of some trouble between cops (Swen Temmel, Bruce Willis), and criminals (whose numbers include Zack Ward, Michael Sirow, Donna D’Errico, and Sean Kanan). The gun battle steps onto Murray’s property after a drug bust gone bad.

 

More of a Swen Temmel and Chad Michael Murray film than a Bruce Willis film, this 2021 film from director James Cullen Bressack (who directed Willis and Murray in “Fortress”) is pretty shoddy stuff. The editing and camerawork in the fight scenes in particular is dreadful, achieving nothing except drawing your attention to the stunt doubles by (badly) trying to disguise them. Judging by the end credits, nearly every credited actor had their own stunt double. Somewhere Tom Cruise is weeping.

 

I like that Bressack tries to give the film a sense of urgency out of the blocks, but it does make it a touch difficult to find your bearings in the plot at first. And once you do, it's very stock-standard stuff not especially well done. Meanwhile, Mr. Temmel is much more interesting company than former TV heartthrob Murray, who is saddled with a dull cliché – drunk and grieving. The best performance here by far is by the reliable shit weasel Zack Ward. Saddled with bleach blond hair, guyliner, and absolutely awful tattoos, Ward is pitch-perfect casting as a dickhead henchman. Michael Sirow basically has the lead heel role here for much of the film, until the real lead villain shows up at the climax. Sirow is much more believable than he was in “Out of Death”, and much more impressive than the actor playing his boss, who is singularly unimpressive and unimposing. Former “Baywatch” babe Donna D'Errico has seen much, much better days and is poorly miscast as another henchperson. An amusingly mohawk-sporting Sean Kanan earns a chuckle or two as another henchman, but the occasional soap actor and “Karate Kid III” co-star is strangely underused. He deserves better. As for Willis…yeah.

 

The issue with Willis here doesn’t so much appear to be that he’s unable to act anymore (though his performance still isn’t good), but more that he had limited time on set and thus they had to choose from whatever few takes the director was able to get out of him. And some of those takes just aren’t any good. Overall I think he has more better moments than in say “Out of Death” where his current health condition was laid pretty bare.

 

The bad guy performances by Zack Ward and Michael Sirow are enough to earn this action film a couple of points. Outside of them and a brief appearance by Sean Kanan, this one’s pretty dire. Also known as “Survive the Game”, the screenplay is by Ross Peacock (who had written and directed some short films before this). 

 

Rating: C