American Siege (2022)

½ star
There might come a time for serious discussion on whether Bruce Willis tarnished his legacy. Starting in 2014, he has relentlessly (and shamelessly) churned out a number of direct-to-video movies of dreadful quality, supposedly only working for a few days at a time before moving on to the next paycheck. I’m sure it’s fun to make money by working as little as possible, but Willis doesn’t appear to be enjoying himself. In exchange for easy money, he gives us wooden performances and stilted dialogue. Nicolas Cage has also been making a lot of obscure movies lately, but he still makes interesting choices, and his performances show that he brings his “A” game no matter what. Willis looks like he’d rather be somewhere else, but here he is anyway.

In the ineptly and unimaginatively titled American Siege, he plays a sheriff in rural Georgia who faces a hostage situation involving three criminals and their victim, a doctor with a secret. Grace (Anna Hindman) wants to know what happened to her sister Brigit, and the doctor knows what happened to her. She also suspects Sheriff Ben Watts was involved in her disappearance. Charles Rutledge (Timothy V. Murphy) is the father of Deputy Sheriff Kyle Rutledge (Trevor Gretzky) and takes charge of the standoff by dismissing Ben, calling him washed up. Was the screenwriter making a sneaky reference to Willis’s career? Did Willis notice, or did he care? Not likely, just like nobody cared that the music credit went to someone named XXXXXX, which is probably a mistake.

This movie is full of baffling scenes. During a conversation between Ben and Charles, I’m fairly certain that when the camera cut away from Bruce Willis, someone else filled in for his voice. There’s a vault in the doctor’s house. When it’s finally blown open, Grace’s brother Toby (Johann Urb) goes downstairs and emerges in a warehouse obviously filmed someplace else, as evidenced by the exit sign, multiple rooms and tall ceiling. It turns out to be a meth lab, with a naked cook wearing only an apron (at least Walter White kept his tighty-whities on) and completely oblivious to what’s going on upstairs. Another sheriff deputy is staged across the lake spying on the house through her rifle scope, apparently spending most of the movie on her elbows. In the middle of the climactic shootout, the shaky camera weaves in and around the action for no reason. Better movies use this technique to capture the chaos of a situation, but the action here involves no thrills and no strategy, making the camera an unnecessary distraction.

The doctor eventually explains his role in Brigit’s activities before her disappearance and her involvement in the drug trade, which also included Charles. One of the hostage takers, Roy (Rob Gough), spent ten years in prison thanks to Brigit. His arrest scene in a flashback reveals that cops working for Charles have a tattoo on their inner wrist, an absurd bit of info since the same tattoo on multiple cops would attract unwanted attention. As the movie ends, Grace is running through a cotton field, leaving a blood stain on one of the plants, which we see in a close-up. What is the significance? There is none. It’s a needless shot thrown in by the director because he thought it was worth showing us, but it means absolutely nothing.

Despite a hostage situation happening in front of him, Ben displays little emotion or interest. Willis is on hand to recite his lines and go home. He doesn’t respect the material, even though he should because he was hired to bring it to life. If he didn’t like the script, he should have rejected the offer to star. The story isn’t remotely interesting, and the drug backstory is presented to us in a large data dump to add a twist in the third act. There was little he could have done to salvage this project, but regardless he’s setting a bad example as a professional actor by being noncommittal. Johann Urb, by contrast, outshines Willis. He’s a big guy and looks confident playing his role. I’ve seen him in a few movies (he played Leon Kennedy in Resident Evil: Retribution), and I hope he can move on to better things. American Siege is a colossal waste of time. In 2021, Willis starred in seven (!) direct-to-video movies. It’s 2022 now. The year is still young.

© 2022 Silver Screen Reviews

Update: I wrote this review before learning of Bruce Willis's condition that led to his decision to retire from acting. American Siege is still a bad movie, and it makes me wonder if unscrupulous producers took advantage of him due to his name recognition. Whatever the case, I wish him all the best and an enjoyable retirement. What a career!