Cross

Cross (2011)

Callan (aka. Cross) has inherited a power from his bloodline that makes him bullet proof and able to project strange green energy fields. Along with some well-armed friends he runs around L.A. shooting criminals and doing other sorts of vigilante stuff. When an immortal Viking (played by Vinnie Jones) blows into town with an ancient Egyptian staff things get crazy. See the immortal wants to die and since he is cursed to be the last soul on Earth he needs to kill everyone. To do this the Viking needs to collect the blood of 5 deities from their descendants. Luckily all of them live in L.A. so that works out nicely for him. Only Callan has the power to stop him.

This is a terrible movie. How is that for a starting point of the review? Sadly the movie had enough of a budget, a familiar but workable storyline, and a few familiar faces in the cast so that it shouldn’t have been this bad. But sadly the writing was awful and the movie isn’t ever engaging or interesting. So lets get to a few of my gripes.

Problem number 1 is that there are far too many characters in the story. Cross has a huge team of sidekicks that are all supposed to have their own specialty. There is a sniper, a guy that wears a ton of armor and takes abuse, a hand-to-hand fighter, and another that runs around tossing exploding balls. And this is about ½ the team! There are other characters that only appear in the background of a few scenes. There are so many characters that none of them are interesting. Hell the main character of Cross isn’t developed and his backstory is only briefly touched on. This is also an issue because the villains aren’t given enough screen time to have any presence at all.

Another problem that I had with Cross was how hard it was trying to be “cool”. I’ve never watched a movie like this that make so many attempts at one-liners only to fail. It is painful how blatant that some of the lines are and it almost seems like the actors are looking right at the camera while delivering them with a “hey aren’t I cool” look on their face. This includes the normally funny and charismatic Jake Busey hammering away at the same ball related “hilarious” lines about his balls. It just doesn’t work and the movie won’t quit.

Finally I have issues with the casting of the movie. Brian Austin Green has the look of a lead in this kind of movie, but he brings zero charisma to the role of Cross. He broods a bit, but is so boring to watch that the movie is almost doomed to failure right from the start. Jake Busey who can normally bring a lot of energy to a character is strangely subdued in this movie. It is like he was playing the lite version of most of his characters. Vinnie Jones is wasted as the immortal Viking because he isn’t given any screen time. And Michael Clarke Duncan seems to be sleepwalking thru a less interesting version of the Kingpin (who would have thought that we could ever say that Daredevil was the 2nd worst superhero movie Duncan would be in…). The rest of the main cast is pretty forgettable. This is really annoying since they did have some good actors in really small roles. Tom Sizemore chews up some scenery as a police detective trying to track Cross down, Robert Carradine is getting his crazy on as a mad scientist type, C. Thomas Howell has a tiny role as a bartender, and Danny Trejo shows up long enough to deliver a single line. Sadly these actors were far more interesting to watch then the cast that got most of the screen time. This I found rather annoying.

To sum things up Cross is a disaster and not worth spending your time on. It is boring, annoying, and one of the most poorly writing movies that I’ve ever seen. If you have spent any time reading my 700 plus reviews you know the kinds of flicks I’ve seen. So keep that in mind when considering watching Cross.

½ out of 4

reviewed by John Shatzer