Liberty Stand Still (2002)

Liberty Stand Still (2002)

3/10

Starring

Linda Fiorentino

Wesley Snipes

Directed by Karl Skogland

I recalled seeing Liberty Stand Still when I was much younger and I just felt it was a Phone Booth style ripoff, but instead of a Phone Booth, this time we had a hot dog stand.

The movie was not that great and I can see why many did not like it and because of the bad reviews it never made it to the theaters. It was a direct-to-video release that just lacked the needed jolt of thrill to make it worth seeing more than once.

What was majorly missing in this movie is that energetic charisma in the acting of the leads. It was like they were just comfortable having a gun pointed at them. What you will expect from someone who has a sniper rifle pointed at her and has been shut at more than once from hence rifle is not what this movie gives you.

Liberty (played by Linda Fiorentino) was fine with a rifle pointed at her and was too calm and confident. Joe (Wesley Snipes) was just annoying a character and boring a voice to be fun. His motive may have been more grounded, but the movie tried too much to be believable and failed to be enjoyable. What was lacking is the simplicity of Phone Booth.

Liberty was a gun sales person in an arranged marriage and with a nice boyfriend on the side. She is not that proud of her life as you will get to see when the movie continues to grow, but she has made peace with it.

She and her husband run a company that makes guns and they do not care whose hands the guns fall to as long as the person is willing to pay.

Joe lost his daughter to one of these guns and he wants revenge and not just revenge he wanted the world to see the danger of guns. His style of getting this done is to hold Liberty hostage and make her make his statement for him to the American public. Problem is, this movie didn’t seem to want to take the time to make that statement/argument believable. The movie was more interested in getting us sucked into the lives of the characters which at the point of viewing was very boring. The writer failed to understand what a movie twist is supposed to do.

Twists are supposed to make you go wow!!! If you are like me watching the movie with the power of skipping back, you want to skip back and see the way things were being added up to this point. If you are in the cinema, loose ends in your memory get tired up.

The twist in this movie was so pathetic and the delivery lacked enthusiasm, that even if you missed it, it not in anyway affected the movie’s outcome.

I cannot in good faith say go take a swing at Liberty Stand Still, because I rather leave the movie in the memory of movies I have seen way back when.