REVIEW: Out of Death

 A number of months ago, I watched Cosmic Sin.  It was a Bruce Willis movie from 2021, and it was awful.  I didn't feel the need to see another of his films for a long while.  The experience was torturous, and it was an uncomfortable viewing that showed just how far Willis' career has fallen.  There was no reason I needed to go through this kind of pain again.

But then I did.  Apex had come out, and a dark side of me yearned to see it.  Just this once, I thought.  Just one more Bruce Willis film.  And then I heard of Midnight in the Switchgrass, which is much more of a Megan Fox film than it is a Bruce Willis movie.  This one, thankfully, wasn't horrible.  But did I stop there?  Nope.  Then I watched the oh so pathetic and laugh out loud worthy Survive The Game.  That's a total of four low quality Bruce Willis films from 2021.

As much as I knew that I had an accurate understanding of where Willis' career was, I could not stop myself from pressing play on Out of Death, which had recently become available on Netflix (it is not a Netflix original film).  As almost always, Willis plays a cop.  Also as almost always, he is sitting down a lot of the time.  He plays Jack Harris, who finds himself caught up in a scenario with crooked cops and an innocent hiker who saw and captured their misdeeds on camera.

That hiker is Shannon (Jamie King), and she's an idiot.  If ever there was a cinematic master of horrible decisions whilst hiding from people who want to kill her, Shannon would be in the running.  Luckily for her, the dangerous baddies that are looking to kill her are incredibly stupid as well.  In my review of Survive the Game, I mentioned how everyone was incredibly incompetent, and the characters in Out of Death are almost at that level of stupidity.

Out of Death's dialogue and performance hold hands and dance down the yellowbrick road of shame.  There is only one scene in Out of Death where I felt like there was actually a level of quality to the script and performances.  For a brief moment, in a death scene of one of the major characters, we see something human and real.  While that one scene may not even last a full minute, it is one of the only reasons this film isn't getting a zero star rating.

While watching, it started feeling as though they were using a stand in for Willis in a number of the scenes.  From jogging through the forest to grabbing items in a cabin, directors Mike Burns and Al Imran Niloy were making sure his face was never in the shots.  My gut feeling was that this was because Willis only gave them a day or two to shoot his scenes.  It turns out I was correct, as he was only on set for a single day out of a nine day shoot.

Out of Death most certainly comes across as a film that was shot in nine days, and Willis' performance and command of his lines is one of the lowest aspects of the movie.  The base story isn't awful, but how it plays out makes it tedious.  From a visuals perspective, it doesn't look great.  The colours are muted and dull, making what should be a vibrant forest feel bland.  Don't watch this movie.  If you want a 'so bad it's kind of good' Bruce Willis film from last year, skip past Out of Death.

Rating - 0.5 out of 4 stars