Set on Christmas Eve, but don't expect any festive fun in this revenge thriller, which features Val Kilmer as an apparently innocent man who was beaten to death by six cops, and now he returns from beyond the grave to seek vengeance on those same lawmen. And whatdya know... They're the only people in the station that evening. All of his victims die in ways related to to the part they played in his demise, e.g the one who tied him up gets hanged with a rope, the one who beat him with the shovel is disemboweled with a spade... you know how it goes. These are some slow-witted officers though... they only start to try to kill him after the second victim croaks, and they finally figure out what is going on after the third dude gets wasted. I hear they're experts at donut rationing though...
Kilmer may think he is scary with his random whistling and blank stare, but believe me... he isn't. He's like a fifth rate clone of Harry Powell from Night Of The Hunter. Sadly, the director disagrees... so we get lots of shots of his expressionless face performing three bars from Mozart's 'Death Mask'. This gets tedious real soon, but not as much as repeated flashbacks of his torture, or the abduction of the girl he was accused of killing. Is any of this necessary? Nope. The word 'padding' comes to mind. I also must bring up the bits near the end, where you get the feeling the scriptwriter just threw his pen away and said "Anything Goes". The deaths get REALLY stupid, the plots twists get REALLY desperate, and as for the deus ex machina (I've been waiting to use THAT term for a while) that saves the day... Well, let me sum it up for you. PUR-LEASE.
Final thought: I bet Kilmer's wage took up more than half the budget. Just a hunch. 4/10
Kilmer may think he is scary with his random whistling and blank stare, but believe me... he isn't. He's like a fifth rate clone of Harry Powell from Night Of The Hunter. Sadly, the director disagrees... so we get lots of shots of his expressionless face performing three bars from Mozart's 'Death Mask'. This gets tedious real soon, but not as much as repeated flashbacks of his torture, or the abduction of the girl he was accused of killing. Is any of this necessary? Nope. The word 'padding' comes to mind. I also must bring up the bits near the end, where you get the feeling the scriptwriter just threw his pen away and said "Anything Goes". The deaths get REALLY stupid, the plots twists get REALLY desperate, and as for the deus ex machina (I've been waiting to use THAT term for a while) that saves the day... Well, let me sum it up for you. PUR-LEASE.
Final thought: I bet Kilmer's wage took up more than half the budget. Just a hunch. 4/10
