Review – Striking Distance

Odd title, considering this stinker doesn’t come within miles of being a decent movie. Bruce Willis steps out of character (yeah, right) to play a down-on-his-luck supercop, a slovenly rebel who plays by his own rules, trying to thwart a serial killer. The closest the plot comes to having any appeal at all is that our hero ends up exiled to river patrol, which at least provides an excuse for something besides car chases (assuming, that is, that there’s a genuine qualitative difference between a car chase and a boat chase). This is also one of those annoying mystery-thrillers that sets up only one likely culprit and then introduces an element of way-too-contrived surprise by having the killer turn out to be someone that couldn’t possibly have been a suspect. More than that I shouldn’t say (if I haven’t already said too much), but those who know me know I hate this sort of deception-for-its-own-sake nonsense. Couple it with the usual, tiresome Willis antics, and the mess doesn’t stand a chance. Wish I’d skipped it