Part 9 – The Failures
Series Navigation
Part 1: The Masterpieces |
Part 2: The Near Perfect |
Part 3: The Excellent |
Part 4: The Very Good |
Part 5: The Solid Craft |
Part 6: The Dependable |
Part 7: The Watchable |
Part 8: The Flawed |
Part 9: The Failures
This is the bottom of a hundred and seventy-four films and it’s the most useful page in the run, because the failures here are legible. Speed 2 removes the one rule that made Speed work. Fast X reinserts a new character into a heist from twelve years earlier. Jack Reacher’s sequel gives a man with no attachments somebody to protect.
The two entries at the bottom are the instructive ones. Predestination and The Butterfly Effect are both technically accomplished, both logically consistent, and both rated minus ten, because cleverness without feeling is its own category of failure and not a shortfall of craft.
These fourteen films disappoint me more than anything else in the series. The cheap ones near the top of this page mostly bore me. The two at the bottom are the worst offenders, because a film that spends real talent on a perfect mechanism and forgets to give me anybody to worry about has thrown away the one thing I go to thrillers for.
Every rating is the one carried by the review it links to. Ties are broken by year, and this is the last of nine parts.
Speed 2 removes the constraint, Streetwalkin has no middle and Fast X rewrites its own history to find a motive. Three structural failures, examined in the Plot Handbook.
1. Angel (1984) [full review]
► Read the full review of Angel (1984)
RLR: 4 / 10
⭐ IMDB: 5.7/10
"High school honor student by day, Hollywood Boulevard by night, and the tagline is the film."
Robert Vincent O’Neil made it for New World and the tagline did the entire marketing campaign. A fifteen-year-old honor student supports herself on Hollywood Boulevard after school while a killer works the same street. New World released it in January 1984 and it took over seventeen million dollars.
The supporting cast is the only reason to sit through it. Dick Shawn as a drag performer, Susan Tyrrell as a landlady, and Rory Calhoun as a retired cowboy actor who does quick-draw demonstrations for tourists. All three are better than the film. Donna Wilkes was twenty-four playing fifteen and had been in Jaws 2.
The film can’t decide what it is. It presents the premise as social realism, shoots it as exploitation, and resolves it as a revenge picture, and the three tones actively undermine each other in almost every scene. Three sequels followed across the next decade with a different lead each time.
Angel leaves a bad taste. The film asks me to worry about a fifteen-year-old and then points the camera at her the way the men on that boulevard would, and I find that ugly. Shawn, Tyrrell and Calhoun deserved a picture with a conscience.
2. Stripped to Kill (1987) [full review]
► Read the full review of Stripped to Kill (1987)
RLR: 5 / 10
⭐ IMDB: 5.1/10
"A detective goes undercover in a club and has to perform to maintain the cover."
Katt Shea made her directing debut for Roger Corman and the production circumstances explain most of it.
Corman required a specific quantity of nudity and Shea built a murder investigation around the requirement. Shea co-wrote it with Andy Ruben, who also produced for Corman. Corman produced hundreds of features on this model across four decades.
The undercover premise is the good idea, and the film does more with it than the brief allowed. The rehearsal scenes, the backstage talk about money and rotation, and the detective’s first successful performance are real work, and they earn it a 5. Then it keeps abandoning all of that to get to the next routine. Kay Lenz plays the detective and Greg Evigan her partner on the case.
The killer’s identity depends on a physical deception that couldn’t survive a single close conversation, let alone months of employment in the same small venue. The reveal asks the audience to accept something the film has already disproved on screen. A sequel followed two years later with Shea directing again.
3. Ghost Ship (2002) [full review]
► Read the full review of Ghost Ship (2002)
RLR: 4 / 10
⭐ IMDB: 5.5/10
"The opening three minutes are better than the ninety that follow."
Steve Beck’s opening three minutes are famous and the rest of the film can’t approach them. A cable snaps across a ballroom full of dancing passengers and the shot holds long enough for the audience to understand what has happened. Dark Castle produced it after House on Haunted Hill and Thir13en Ghosts.
Everything afterward is a standard haunted ship picture. A salvage crew, a derelict liner, ghosts explaining their circumstances in flashback, and a reveal about gold and a demonic collection operation that removes the mystery entirely. Beck had been a visual effects art director before this and directed twice total. Gabriel Byrne and Julianna Margulies are considerably overqualified and the film gives them almost nothing. Karl Urban is in it in an early role and the film runs ninety-one minutes, its most merciful quality. It cost around twenty million dollars and took over sixty-eight.
That opening is a nasty, perfect little piece of horror, and I’m angry at the eighty-odd minutes that follow for squandering it. Byrne and Margulies deserved a script that kept going after minute three. By the time the gold and the demon show up, I’ve stopped caring who gets off the boat.
I Am Wrath is more alive whenever the lead is off screen. That’s a diagnosis and not a compliment. Fix it at the top of the page using the Protagonist Handbook.
4. Life on the Line (2015) [full review]
► Read the full review of Life on the Line (2015)
RLR: 4 / 10
⭐ IMDB: 5.6/10
"A power lineman drama with a genuine subject and no idea how to use it."
David Hackl made a film about power linemen with John Travolta and the subject is underserved. The work is dangerous, specific and almost never depicted, and the film has no idea what to do with any of it. Kate Bosworth, Devon Sawa and Gil Bellows appear across the supporting cast.
The technical material is the only thing worth anything here. Energized lines, bucket trucks, the procedures for working near live current, and the storm sequence in the last act gets the danger right. Hackl had directed Saw V and worked as production designer on the earlier films.
Everything around it’s melodrama assembled from parts. A guilt-ridden uncle, a niece with a boyfriend he disapproves of, a veteran with post-traumatic stress, a pregnancy and a hurricane, and none of the threads connect to the profession the film is about. It was shot in Albuquerque and went to a limited release in 2016.
Linemen deserve a real movie, and that’s why this one disappoints me as much as it does. The storm sequence shows what the film could have been. Everything else is soap opera stapled onto a profession far more interesting than anybody the script invented.
5. Captain America: Civil War (2016) [full review]
► Read the full review of Captain America: Civil War (2016)
RLR: 4 / 10
⭐ IMDB: 7.8/10
"The entry that began the franchise’s transition, and the argument does not hold."
The Russos followed The Winter Soldier with the film that began the franchise’s transition from thriller to ensemble management, and two years and an enormous drop in discipline separate the two pictures. Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely wrote all three Captain America films.
The central argument doesn’t hold. The Sokovia Accords propose oversight of enhanced individuals, a real question, and the film assigns the position to whichever character the plot needs on that side. Tony Stark’s reversal is written from the requirement backward. It took over one billion dollars worldwide against a budget around two hundred and fifty.
The airport sequence is the reason the film exists and it’s choreographed with considerable skill. It’s also a fight nobody in it wants, between people who have no reason to be there, staged so that nothing permanent can happen to anybody. Tom Holland and Chadwick Boseman both make their first appearances in it.
The actual thriller is buried underneath. Zemo’s plan is patient, personal and entirely achievable by an ordinary man, and it works. That film is a good one and it’s about twenty minutes of the running time. Daniel Bruhl plays Zemo and returned for the Disney Plus series five years later.
I know this is the entry that’ll get me mail. The airport fight is fun for about ten minutes, and then I remember nobody in it can get hurt and nobody in it has a reason to be there. Zemo’s twenty minutes are the movie I wanted, and the franchise buried him under a toy commercial.
6. I Am Wrath (2016) [full review]
► Read the full review of I Am Wrath (2016)
RLR: 4 / 10
⭐ IMDB: 5.5/10
"John Travolta as an engineer with a black ops past, and Christopher Meloni is the reason to watch."
Chuck Russell directed John Travolta as an engineer whose wife is murdered and who turns out to have a black ops background, the most predictable possible version of this premise and the film doesn’t vary it once. Russell had directed The Mask and Eraser earlier in his career.
Christopher Meloni is the entire reason to watch. He plays the old colleague who runs a barber shop and gets every good line, and the film is visibly more alive whenever he’s on screen. Paul Sloan and Yvan Gauthier wrote the screenplay. Meloni had spent twelve seasons on Law and Order: Special Victims Unit.
The plot connects the street-level killing to municipal corruption in a way that requires several coincidences, and the film treats the escalation as inevitable instead of something it needed to construct. Amanda Schull and Sam Trammell appear in supporting parts. Travolta produced it himself and the film went out with minimal promotion.
On Deadly Ground stops for four minutes so its author can state the argument the story failed to make. What to do instead is in the Showing and Telling Handbook.
7. Streetwalkin’ (1985) [full review]
► Read the full review of Streetwalkin’ (1985)
RLR: 5 / 10
⭐ IMDB: 5.2/10
"A first act that moves, and then eighty minutes of nothing changing."
Joan Freeman made it for Roger Corman and the first act moves. A young woman arrives in New York with her brother, is recruited within a day, and the speed of it is the film’s one honest observation. Freeman co-wrote it with Alan Joseph and directed one further feature afterward.
After that nothing changes for eighty minutes. The pimp is violent, she wants out, he prevents it, repeat. There’s no escalation, no complication and no development until the film decides it’s time to end. Leo went on to win an Academy Award for The Fighter twenty-five years later.
Melissa Leo is in her first lead role and is doing real work in a picture with no interest in her.
The early scenes of the women working the same blocks, talking rates, police and safety, are the best twenty minutes in it, and along with Leo they earn it a 5. Dale Midkiff plays the antagonist with a single tone and the film asks for nothing else. Julie Newmar appears in a small part late in the film.
8. Speed 2: Cruise Control (1997) [full review]
► Read the full review of Speed 2: Cruise Control (1997)
RLR: 3 / 10
⭐ IMDB: 3.9/10
"Speed works because a bus cannot slow down. A ship cannot do anything else."
Jan de Bont directed his own sequel, Keanu Reeves declined to return, and the premise moves from a bus to a cruise liner. The change removes the one rule that made the first film work. Reeves turned down a reported twelve million dollars to return.
Speed is built on a bus that can’t drop below fifty miles an hour. A ship can slow down, stop, or be evacuated, and it moves at a speed that permits conversation, deliberation and a helicopter. There’s no clock anywhere in the picture. Jason Patric replaced him and the character is a different officer entirely.
Reeves turned down a reported twelve million dollars and Jason Patric plays a different officer entirely, leaving Sandra Bullock as the only returning principal. The film cost around one hundred and sixty million and nobody who worked on it has ever defended it. Dafoe has never listed it among the work he discusses.
Willem Dafoe plays the antagonist as a man with a grievance and leeches, and the performance is committed to a character the film can’t make threatening. Sandra Bullock returns and is given a story about her boyfriend’s job. It cost around one hundred and sixty million dollars and took under one hundred and seventy.
The dock sequence at the end is a real practical achievement. A real ship driven into a real port set at speed, built at scale, and it’s the only thing in the film with any physical weight to it at all. It won Razzies for Worst Remake or Sequel among several other categories.
Speed 2 feels like a personal insult. The first film had one perfect rule, and this one throws it overboard before the opening credits and spends a fortune pretending nobody will notice. The dock crash is impressive, and it’s the only minute where anyone seems to remember what made the first one work.
9. The Gray Man (2022) [full review]
► Read the full review of The Gray Man (2022)
RLR: 3 / 10
⭐ IMDB: 6.5/10
"Two hundred million dollars and nothing in it you have not seen."
The Russos spent around two hundred million dollars of Netflix’s money on an adaptation of Mark Greaney’s novel, and the result is the most expensive generic action film ever produced. Nothing in it’s been seen anywhere else at that price. Greaney has published more than a dozen Gray Man novels since 2009.
Ryan Gosling plays Six with the detachment the part requires and no material to apply it to. The character has a redacted history, a moral line and a protected child, and all three arrive as specifications instead of as anything discovered. Ana de Armas, Rege-Jean Page and Billy Bob Thornton fill out the cast.
Chris Evans is enjoying himself as the antagonist and the moustache is the most memorable thing in two hours. Lloyd Hansen is written as a sociopath with quips and Evans plays him considerably harder than the script suggests. Netflix announced a sequel and a spinoff before the film had been released.
The Prague sequence cost a reported forty million dollars and involves a tram, a square and enough explosives to register from orbit. It’s competent, it’s expensive, and it’s impossible to recall a single shot from it afterward. Markus and McFeely wrote it after working with the Russos on the Marvel films.
Two hundred million dollars and I can’t remember a single frame. That’s the part that galls me. Evans’s moustache has more personality than the plot, and Gosling looks like a man waiting for a script that never arrived. When a film this rich gives me nothing to hold, I take it as contempt for the audience.
Predestination closes its loop perfectly and removes every choice inside it. The Conflict and Tension Handbook covers where tension comes from.
10. On Deadly Ground (1994) [full review]
► Read the full review of On Deadly Ground (1994)
RLR: 2 / 10
⭐ IMDB: 4.6/10
"Seagal’s directorial debut, and it closes with him lecturing a conference for four minutes."
Seagal’s only film as director cost Warner Bros. around fifty million dollars and closes with him addressing an environmental conference for roughly four minutes. The studio cut the speech down from eleven. Ed Horowitz and Robin U. Russin wrote the screenplay. It was released in February 1994 between Under Siege and Under Siege 2.
Michael Caine is the antagonist and appears to have made peace with the situation early. He plays an oil executive with a ponytail, delivers his lines with total professionalism, and has never discussed the film at any length since. Joan Chen and John C. McGinley appear in supporting parts.
The Alaskan photography is beautiful and the film treats it as scenery for explosions. There’s a spirit vision sequence, a wise elder, and a structure that positions Seagal as the person best qualified to save an indigenous community. It took around three hundred and ninety million yen in Japan alone.
A film is welcome to care about something. This one couldn’t make the story carry its point, so Seagal stopped the picture and lectured me for four minutes. Caine and that Alaskan scenery both deserved better, and by the end of the speech I felt like I’d been kept after class.
11. Fast X (2023) [full review]
► Read the full review of Fast X (2023)
RLR: 2 / 10
⭐ IMDB: 5.7/10
"A flashback inserts a new character into a heist from twelve years earlier."
Justin Lin left the production days into shooting and Louis Leterrier took over, and the seam is visible throughout. The film cost a reported three hundred and forty million dollars and ends mid-scene on a cliffhanger. Leterrier had directed The Transporter and the first Now You See Me.
The opening restages the vault heist from Fast Five and inserts a character who wasn’t there, filmed from angles the original didn’t use. Twelve years of continuity are rewritten to supply the antagonist with a grievance. Brie Larson, Alan Ritchson and Rita Moreno join the cast in this entry.
Justin Lin left days into production over disagreements that both sides have since described in extremely careful language, and Louis Leterrier took over a three hundred and forty million dollar film that was already in motion. The seam runs through the whole picture and it ends mid-scene.
Jason Momoa is doing something different and is the only element of the film worth discussing. Dante is theatrical, camp and openly enjoying himself, and he belongs in a better picture than this one. It’s the tenth film in a series that began in 2001 as a street racing picture.
The franchise has reached the point where nobody can be hurt.
Characters return from confirmed deaths, the series has abandoned physics as a constraint, and the film’s stakes consist of announcing that somebody is in danger. A further entry was announced and repeatedly delayed afterward. Vin Diesel has produced the series since the fourth film in 2009.
A franchise that rewrites its own best heist to invent a villain is telling me nothing I watched counted, and that makes me feel cheated. Momoa is having a blast and I enjoyed every scene he’s in. The rest is a three hundred and forty million dollar shrug.
Civil War assigns positions from the fight backward instead of deriving the fight from the positions. Build the argument first, using the World Builder’s Handbook.
12. Captain America: Brave New World (2025) [full review]
► Read the full review of Captain America: Brave New World (2025)
RLR: 1 / 10
⭐ IMDB: 5.6/10
"Watched in fast forward, and the rating reflects it honestly."
This one was watched in fast forward and the rating reflects that. The film was extensively reshot, with a serious portion of the running time replaced, and the assembly shows it in every transition. Julius Onah directed and five writers share the screenplay credit.
Anthony Mackie is a capable performer given a film with no confidence in him. Sam Wilson carries a shield, an inherited legacy and a political thriller structure that the production appears to have abandoned partway through. Danny Ramirez, Shira Haas and Giancarlo Esposito appear across the cast.
Harrison Ford plays Thaddeus Ross and the transformation sequence arrives as an obligation. The character was a political antagonist, the film converts him into a spectacle in the last act, and neither version is given room to work. Ford took over the Ross part after William Hurt’s death in 2022. I don’t regret the fast forward. Mackie deserves a real movie, and this is a pile of reshoots wearing his costume. When a studio stops believing in its own lead partway through production, I don’t see why it expects me to keep believing.
13. The Butterfly Effect (2004) [full review]
► Read the full review of The Butterfly Effect (2004)
RLR: -10 / 10
⭐ IMDB: 7.6/10
"A disturbing premise squandered on escalating misery it never examines."
Eric Bress and J. Mackye Gruber built a time travel premise around a man who can return to moments in his own childhood through journals, and the technical execution of the branching outcomes is well handled. Bress and Gruber had written Final Destination 2 the year before.
The content is the problem. Each revision produces a worse life, and the film’s chosen catalogue of misery includes child abuse, a dog burned alive, a child killed by explosives and an amputation, none of which the film examines at any point. Amy Smart, Eric Stoltz and Elden Henson appear across the timelines.
The directors’ cut replaces the theatrical ending with a sequence in which the protagonist returns to the womb and strangles himself with his own umbilical cord. Both endings were shot, the studio chose the milder one, and the existence of the alternative says most of what needs saying.
The escalation is the entire structure. Each new timeline exists to be more appalling than the last, and the film’s interest is in the reveal of what has gone wrong instead of in anybody living through it. It cost around thirteen million dollars and took over ninety-six.
The theatrical ending has Ashton Kutcher walk past Amy Smart without recognition. The director’s cut has him return to the womb and strangle himself with the umbilical cord. That tells you what the film thinks profundity looks like. Two direct-to-video sequels followed with no connection to the first.
I find this film repellent. It parades abused children and a burned dog past me as difficulty settings and then asks me to admire the plumbing. I understand why people enjoy tracking the branches, but a film that treats suffering as set dressing gets the lowest score I can give, and the womb ending is pretentious garbage.
14. Predestination (2014) [full review]
► Read the full review of Predestination (2014)
RLR: -10 / 10
⭐ IMDB: 7.4/10
"A clever puzzle in search of a reason to exist."
The Spierig brothers adapted Robert Heinlein’s All You Zombies, a story of about eight pages published in 1959, and the adaptation is faithful, well constructed and logically airtight. Heinlein published All You Zombies in Fantasy and Science Fiction in 1959. The Spierig brothers went on to make Jigsaw and Winchester afterward.
Sarah Snook’s performance is the film’s real achievement and predates her wider recognition by several years. She plays a character across two presentations and the work is precise, committed and better than the picture surrounding it. Ethan Hawke plays the temporal agent and had worked with the Spierigs on Daybreakers.
The loop closes perfectly. Every element accounts for itself, the causality is consistent, and there’s no unexplained thread anywhere in it. It’s a puzzle that assembles into exactly the shape it was designed to make. Snook won the Australian academy award for the performance.
Heinlein’s story runs about eight pages and was published in 1959, and the Spierigs adapt it almost line for line while adding a bomber subplot to give the film a length it can sustain. The additions are the only part of the picture where anybody has a decision available to them.
And the film has no reason to exist beyond the mechanism.
Once the loop closes, the film asks nothing and nothing is at stake, because every participant was always going to do what they did. Cleverness without feeling is its own category of failure. It cost around five million dollars and was shot in Melbourne.
Predestination doesn’t move me, and it should. Snook gives it everything she has, and the film locks her inside a loop where nothing she does could have gone any other way. I don’t care how neatly a puzzle clicks shut if nobody in it gets to choose, and wasting a performance that good on a closed box is hard for me to forgive.
Honorable Mentions: Thrillers Without a Review Here Yet
No review on the site for any of these so far. Every one of them is better than anything above and each is on the list.
The Square (2008)
Nash Edgerton built an Australian noir where a couple takes money that wasn’t theirs and every attempt to cover it produces a body. Nothing in it is anybody’s plan after the first reel.
The Rover (2014)
Michod again, ten years after a collapse, with Guy Pearce pursuing the men who took his car across an Australian desert. The reason he wants it back is the last line of the film.
Mother (2009)
Bong Joon-ho sends a woman to prove her intellectually disabled son didn’t commit a murder, and the film is honest about what she’s willing to do. The opening shot is a woman dancing alone in a field.
The Yellow Sea (2010)
Na Hong-jin sends a Korean-Chinese taxi driver across the border to kill a stranger and clear a debt. The chases are on foot, through traffic, and the weapons are butcher tools and animal bones.
New World (2013)
Park Hoon-jung built a Korean undercover film around a man whose handler won’t let him out, and Hwang Jung-min plays the gangster who loves him. The elevator sequence is the set piece.
Confessions (2010)
Tetsuya Nakashima opens with a teacher calmly telling her class that two of them killed her daughter and that she’s already acted. The rest reframes it from four other points of view.
Burning (2018)
Lee Chang-dong adapted Murakami into a film where nothing is confirmed, including whether a crime occurred. Steven Yeun plays a wealthy man who burns greenhouses and may be describing something else.
Decision to Leave (2022)
Park Chan-wook built a detective story on a surveillance relationship where both parties know they’re being watched. The ending is the most romantic thing he’s filmed and nobody survives it intact.
Emily the Criminal (2022)
John Patton Ford put Aubrey Plaza in debt with a criminal record and no legitimate route out, and the escalation is entirely economic. Every step she takes is the only one available to her. That’s what makes the last act land.
Kimi (2022)
Soderbergh made a pandemic-era Rear Window with a voice-stream reviewer who hears a crime in an audio file. It runs eighty-nine minutes and doesn’t waste any of them.
Widows (2018)
Steve McQueen and Gillian Flynn built a heist around four widows finishing their husbands’ last job. The single-take shot from inside a moving car between two Chicago neighborhoods is the thesis.
Rebel Ridge (2024)
Jeremy Saulnier built a thriller on civil asset forfeiture, with a man trying to post bail against a department that took his money legally. Almost nobody in it fires a weapon.
Dishonorable Mentions: Thrillers That Failed
Also unreviewed here, and each one belongs on this page. Premises worth the budget, lost somewhere between the pitch and the edit.
See How They Run (2022)
A murder at a West End theater with Sam Rockwell and Saoirse Ronan, built entirely on commentary about murder mysteries instead of being one. The self-awareness removes any reason to care who did it.
Bodies Bodies Bodies (2022)
A party game turns real and the film uses it as a vehicle for social satire and then resolves with an accident. The reveal is the point and it arrives after the audience has stopped tracking anybody.
Reptile (2023)
Benicio del Toro in a real estate murder investigation that establishes an atmosphere it can’t cash. The conspiracy resolves through a coincidence and the film runs over two hours getting there.
Leave the World Behind (2023)
Sam Esmail builds real dread out of an unexplained collapse and then has a character deliver a three-stage explanation of the whole event. The mystery was the asset and the film spends it.
Abduction (2011)
Taylor Lautner discovers his own photograph on a missing children website, a good opening, and the film resolves it with a chase and a conspiracy that never explains why anybody waited.
Survivor (2015)
Milla Jovovich and Pierce Brosnan in a film where the assassin repeatedly declines the clean shot for reasons the script never supplies. The plot needs him to keep missing and the film never gives him a reason to.
What Do You Think?
The bottom two are the interesting argument. Predestination is technically flawless, and I rated it minus ten because a closed loop removes every choice in it. I’d sooner sit through Speed 2 again than admire another film that forgot to give anybody a reason to care, and I know that’s a strong thing to say about a boat movie. Tell me whether that’s a failure or a genre I don’t enjoy.
Continue the Series
Part 1: The Masterpieces |
Part 2: The Near Perfect |
Part 3: The Excellent |
Part 4: The Very Good |
Part 5: The Solid Craft |
Part 6: The Dependable |
Part 7: The Watchable |
Part 8: The Flawed |
Part 9: The Failures
