if you know nothing, don't review the film

I am always suspect when I read reviews that claim "poor acting" or some similar complaint, as if any of the common viewers who write in here know anything about acting. Here's a hint: They Don't. So if you read anything about this movie claiming that the acting isn't good, you can rest assured THAT person isn't an actor and knows little of the craft. The villain in this movie is excellently portrayed by D'Onofrio, he created an unusual character with a new slant on a skinhead White Supremacy group leader, adopting a coherent and legitimate accent, nervous and prissy mannerisms and a quiet-but-deadly seriousness ala Hannibal Lecter. Willis, on the other hand, is his usual smarmy self, and does what he always does, brings that same bad-ass confident wise-cracking persona to his roles. That IS what Willis DOES, and it works. The same person who complains about Willis 'phoning it in' also doesn't like D'Onofrio's creative characterization! What's it gonna be? Either an actor is going to be 'himself' and bring the role to his 'brand', or he's going to create a character, you can't complain about both without more evidence. Perhaps a snipe at Dawson is legit in this movie, she's over-the-top at times, but it's an ACTION MOVIE!

Other reviews complain about plot elements as if what they saw were all that occured, such as "only on lesson he becomes a crack shot". How do you know it was 'only one lesson???. Clearly, many scenes of them falling in love were implied and not shown. That type complaint simply isn't valid.

The plot does have a few weak spots, but not anything mentioned by the 1-star "reviewers". Where this one lost it's way a little was the failure of Dawson's character to realize buying a plane ticket with her own credit card was going to draw attention, either from the villain or the police. Those are inconsistent with her previous intelligence and acumen for the job, such as when she realizes the empty parking lot means trouble (she doesn' SEE the sniper! duh). She then reads a note, thanks the fireman who gave it to her and leads the bad guys right to her boyfriend. That's a cop? NJo, and again, inconsistant to the character. THAT is an error in character development. We then cut to her crying, behaving as if she thought Josh was dead!? If the note said that type of thing, she wouldn't have reacted when she first read it. THAT is an error in the directing, or possibly writing, but more probably indicates that something was cut from the film, and the explanatory scene was sacrificed for time and flow. Two other slow spots were the cliche 'hero takes a shower and reflects on his misfortune' scenes.

Those are the directing flaws worth mentioning, yet what are the complaints we read here? "A fireman wouldn't be a tough guy so quickly", or "a white gang wouldn't battle the Crips". but those are the 'suspension of disbelief' elements we have to accept for the ACTION MOVIE to work at all, they are NOT plotting errors or Directing mistakes. Once a character is set, if that character behaves in a way inconsistent with the character's back-story, THEN you have an error, but questioning the plot elements that make the story possible aren't. Example? The movie Aliens would have us accept several elements of space travel and discovery of alien life. Those aren't mistakes, they are elements of the story we suspend disbelief on. But when The hard-nosed space-captain goes back into the spaceship after escaping the horrible aliens, just because her 'kitty-cat' was still back there and had to be rescued, THAT is a mistake, because her character would not do that. She had already left a human being in the airlock because regulations said after contact you can't let them aboard. So she behaved inconsistently with the established character. With training such as this, our reviewers could provide real analysis of the movie. As it is, don't believe the 2-stars because they can't accept that it's an ACTION movie