HOT SEAT (2022)

HOT SEAT (2022)

Tagline: Nope.

(Thriller, Crime, Bombs Away) [R]

No This Is Always Part Of The Film Where The Partners Split Up To Cover More Ground And One Of Them Ends Up Dying

In this one Orlando Friar is trying to turn his life around starting a family and getting a respectable job after a life of hacking computers. One day on the job the intercom system is taken over by a mysterious man telling Orlando that he has a bomb under his chair and that any attempt to leave will set the bomb off (so yeah, hot seat, pun intended). The man then asks him to hack into major banks so money can be transferred to him. As things escalate a bomb squad has to overcome a number of opinions on how to deal with the issue. 

I have seen a lot of reviews comparing this plot to other films and there is a good reason for that. It feels a lot like SPEED without the chase scenes or THE NEGOTIATOR. The production value isn’t great, but they utilize some cool-looking CGI to enhance the “hacker” element of the story. So to say this is a cinematic accomplishment would fail the “accuracy” test. This is very much a budget flick that could have been better but is far from bad. 

Just guessing that everyone is pretty much “over” Mel Gibson’s drunken crazy talk tirades because this dude is making about as many movies as Nicolas Cage or Liam Neeson right now. So when you see Mel’s name on something, it’s a lot like seeing Nicolas Cage’s name. You might check out the movie just to see if it is accidentally good or just a total crap show. Gibson’s role in this is actually pretty solid as Wallace Reed. He doesn’t seem out of place or like he’s not trying. Having been in over 70 movies Gibson is probably most famous for the LETHAL WEAPON series. He is also an accomplished director. We also get Shannen Doherty in this because someone must have watched FORTRESS and decided she would make a good military or bomb squad director type. Doherty is best known for “Beverly Hills 90210”. She isn’t good in this, so even if you are a fan, I wouldn’t bother watching this movie for her. Kevin Dillon is basically the lead in this and I thought his performance was great for this film. He is best known for playing Brian Flagg in the 80’s remake of THE BLOB. We get a bit of Eddie Steeples in this as Jackson. I thought his banter back and forth with Reed and Jackson was actually pretty decent and felt natural. Basically like conversations, you might have with a co-worker you know won’t get butt hurt if you say something sarcastic about them. Looking at the rest of the secondary cast I thought Kate Katzman was good in the screen time she got. She has only been acting for 7 years and has at least one more movie on the way. 

Regarding the pacing, this one moves along at a pretty decent clip and the intrigue builds as it goes. I have also read a few reviews saying they thought the movie was predictable, but I didn’t find that at all. I get that the story probably needed to revolve around a bad guy we probably really had to have at least seen once, but I would never have guessed the bad guy was who it was. 

I don’t really have any complaints regarding this one. I don’t harbor hatred for certain actors and their crazy antics so I wish the best for Gibson and hope he gets or has gotten whatever help he needs. At least on screen, the dude is always pretty watchable even when he’s mailing it in. 

Overall this is a 4 out of 7. The production was fine, but we got a lot of films with better stories even just this year. There might even be some bomb squad-based TV shows that have episodes that are better.

GRAPHICS ARE THE PROPERTY OF LION’S FILMS AND ARE USED FOR REVIEW PURPOSES ONLY.