I love a good shoot 'em up action movie. Those one-man hero movies that made the likes of Die Hard so good to watch are right up my street. And I also like Ryan Philippe as an actor and really got into his Netflix show Shooter. So when The 2nd popped up I settled in for what I hoped would be another great flick. Oh how wrong I was.
Despite the premise actually being quite decent, the execution of this film borders on the ridiculous. I would go so far as to say “you couldn't make this sh*t up” but clearly somebody did. So it goes like this…
Shawn Davis (Jack Griffo) and Erin Walton (Lexi Simonsen) are the only two students left on an entire college campus as it breaks for the holidays. Erin's father is a Supreme Court Justice and as such she has her own protective detail. Shawn is waiting for his father, Major Vic Davis (Phillipe) and when both are being picked up at the same time Vic notices something fishy about the guys collecting Erin. It quickly becomes apparent that they are trying to kidnap her. So flexing his Delta Force muscles he takes on the entire group of kidnappers by himself.
But why are they trying to kidnap her I hear you ask? Well, that's a rather convoluted story. There is clearly a challenge to The 2nd amendment in the works. Erin's father has what looks like the deciding vote. So in order to influence him, the plan is to kidnap his daughter until he provides the correct response. The problem is his daughter is so infuriatingly juvenile and spoilt that you could be forgiven for hoping the bad guys actually do succeed!
The acting is atrocious. And I mean ATROCIOUS. It's like they pulled wooden planks off the street and give them a script. The action scenes are hilarious and even those left for dead miraculously bounce back to continue torturing us as the movie rolls on. If I could have stopped watching and spared myself 93 minutes I would have. Sadly, I had to write this review so I reluctantly plowed on. The upside is that I might just save you an evening of misery!
