Main cast: Cam Gigandet (Jake), Teri Reeve (Vasquez), Benjamin Charles Watson (Simms), Casey Hendershot (Hudson), John Brodsky (Taylor), Dion Mucciacito (Diego), Michael Dale (Colonel Irving), and Arash Mokhtar (General Khan)
Director: Jesse Gustafson
Jake is a black ops guy—which means he knows many lovely ways to kill someone in the blink of an eye—that has finally come home to see his daughter. He stops by the bar to work up his nerves, as it’s really been a long time and he has no idea what to say to his daughter, and things go downhill quickly when he gets involved in a fight and kills one fellow before being overpowered and knocked out. When he comes to, he’s in a high security prison, with a bunch of people all of whom had no idea how they got here. Well, it’s not a party until the prison complex is assaulted by terrorists, because the prison complex is also a secret drone facility. Is Black Site Delta scripted by a teenager?
The ludicrous script aside, the main cast of characters are all stock standard casting types. There is the obnoxious loudmouth, the violent fellow, the silent and bookish fellow, the loose cannon, and of course, the token female bad-ass.
It takes me a while to realize why this one feels off, the ridiculous story aside: for an action movie, it is bewilderingly slow. Everyone here moves and acts slowly, the action takes place at a glacial pace, and the main characters spend a lot of their screen time lurking in some corner and talking while waiting for something to happen. Never mind that it is implausible that a group of people with military and special forces training would just stop and talk out in the open when they are under attack; such scenes only bog down the movie and kill what little momentum that exists.
Even scenes involving gunfire feel sluggish. This movie is like some near-dead fellow in need of a jolt of electricity to keep it going. The way the movie unfurls in a manner that is both predictable yet ludicrous—how convenient that Jake and the leader of the bad guys have a history together, who would’ve thought they would meet again in a movie like this?—only adds to my suspicion that everyone involved in the writing and directing of this movie has no idea of what they are doing.
Cam Gigandet and Teri Reeve are okay as action leads, but seriously, they could do better than what this movie has handed them. I also don’t know what is happening to Mr Gigandet. If he had made peace with starring in B-grade action flicks, I’m all for it, but he really should be selective in his choice of roles. Wait, does he need money that badly? At the rate he is going, starting an OnlyFans may actually be a more dignified career move.
Anyway, chalk this one up as an unspectacular, middling movie that falls short of being entertaining.
