A DAY TO DIE (2022)

A DAY TO DIE (2022)

Tagline: Nope

(Action, Drama, Challenged Morality) [R]

In this one, the uniquely named Connor Connolly ends up killing one of crime boss Tyrone Pettis’s men while trying to protect one of his parolees. Pettis offers to let him live if he can bring $2 million dollars to him in 24 hours. To guarantee this happens Connor’s wife Candice is taken hostage by Pettis. In response Connelly turns to his former military ops friends to help him get the money, but who is really pulling the strings and why?

This movie was actually shot in 5 weeks and it seems like it could have been done in a lot shorter time frame than that. I think the storyline is intriguing but ultimately a lot like THE BATMAN, it feels very cookie-cutter and looks it was borrowed from a random episode of (insert literally any cop show ever here). It should also be noted, in spite of the fact that Bruce Willis (DIE HARD) is on the poster and plays a major character. His on-screen time is probably less than 3 total minutes of the 1 hour and 45 minutes of run time.   

Regarding the acting, I don’t think that this was even Kevin Dillon’s (HOT SEAT) best performance this year, but his character is likable and I thought he did a solid job in this role as Connor Connolly. Frank Grillo’s character Brice Mason leads the military ops crew, but after we get to the halfway mark, his role is diminished so much it feels like having him in the movie was almost an afterthought. They could have easily just written Connor in more and had him take charge of the crew himself. Probably the most interesting lines and role went to Leon as Tyrone Pettis. Leon has been in Hollywood for quite some time and has been in over 80 movies and TV shows. His role in this won’t win any awards, but the duplicitous nature that Leon approaches the character with means this dude out-acted everyone else in the film. Leon is probably most famous for playing Derice in COOL RUNNINGS. Just watching that movie and this one side-by-side show you how underrated Leon is. Brooke Butler plays Candice Connolly and her career has been blowing up lately so that’s awesome for her. I thought she was solid in this for what they asked her to do. 

Cinematically this was about average for a direct-to-video movie but did get released in a few theaters bringing in less than 1 million at the box office. The pacing is fine but the beginning of the movie makes this feel like it has a chance to be a lot bigger than it ends up. The lighting comes across as amateur but does the job. The dialog is okay but the soundtrack is actually pretty decent. There is a cool rendition of “House of the Rising Sun” by Jerrica Ricard to close the movie which I thought was an awesome touch. I actually looked for the song on Spotify and other streaming services but can’t find it. 

When you start really looking at some of these low-budget action flicks a lot of them kind of start to feel like one giant movie that should have been a show. This script seems like it could easily have been worked into with both FORTRESS films or really just about every other Bruce Willis lead movie that has come out over the past 2 years. I hate to say that because none of these films are what I would call “terrible”. It just seems like no one really had a goal of making anything groundbreaking. 

Overall this one is a watchable effort for a mellow Saturday afternoon, but as I have tried to warn people in the past, do not go into this expecting any sort of a blockbuster. Go into it thinking you are getting a long episode of the TV show “Blue Bloods”, only you get to see Bruce Willis. 

This one gets a 3 out of 7. 

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