I remember
seeing Liberty Stand Still when I was much younger, and I thought it
was just a Phone Booth rip-off—except
instead of a phone booth, this time we had a hot dog stand.
The movie wasn’t that great, and I can see why many people didn’t like it.
Because of the bad reviews, it never made it to theaters and was released
straight to video. It lacked the jolt of thrill needed to make it worth
watching more than once.
What was mostly
missing in this movie was the energetic charisma in the leads’ performances. It
felt like they were way too comfortable having a gun pointed at them. You’d
expect someone with a sniper rifle aimed at them—and who’s already been shot
at—to react differently, but that’s not what this movie delivers.
Liberty (played by Linda Fiorentino) was oddly calm and confident with a rifle
pointed at her. Joe (Wesley Snipes) was an annoying character with a boring
voice, making him hard to root for. His motive might have been more grounded,
but the movie tried too hard to be believable and ended up failing to be
enjoyable. What it really lacked was the simplicity of Phone Booth.
Liberty is a gun
salesperson in an arranged marriage, with a nice boyfriend on the side. She’s
not exactly proud of her life, as you’ll see as the movie progresses, but she’s
made peace with it.
She and her husband run a company that manufactures guns, and they don’t care
whose hands the guns end up in, as long as the buyer can pay.
Joe lost his
daughter to one of these guns, and he wants revenge—not just for himself, but
to show the world the dangers of guns. His plan is to hold Liberty hostage and
force her to make his statement to the American public. The problem is, the
movie doesn’t take the time to make that statement or argument believable.
Instead, it tries to suck us into the characters’ lives, which, at that point,
were pretty boring. The writer didn’t seem to understand what a movie twist is
supposed to do.
Twists are
supposed to make you go, “Wow!” If you’re like me, watching with the ability to
skip back, you’d want to rewind and see how everything added up to that point.
If you’re in a cinema, loose ends in your memory get tied up.
The twist in this movie was so pathetic, and the delivery lacked so much
enthusiasm, that even if you missed it, it wouldn’t have affected the movie’s
outcome.
I can’t, in good
faith, tell you to give Liberty Stand Still a try. I’d rather leave
it in the memory of movies I saw way back when.
0 comments:
Post a Comment