The Watcher, starring Keanu Reeves, James Spader, Marisa Tomei, and Ernie Hudson. I was a bit dubious about it and only saw it due to external outside influences (stagrrr).
The plot opens in a massively cliched style, ye olde burnt-out cop living life on the edge, all alone in a dirty apartement, his only friend a gun. He’s not alcoholic, BUT is addicted to painkillers or migraine pills or something, so basically, he’s just like every other burnt out cop, except not cool like Bruce Willis or Arnie.
Of course, he can’t be a burnt-out suicidal cop without something in his life that had gone horribly wrong. Extremely predictably, its the old “bad guys killed his girlfriend” plot, which then develops into the “serial killer haunting the one cop” plot. There’s the obligatory deaths of a few characters to throw the cops into a hunting frenzy.
Marisa Tomei, who stars as a Plot Device, is crudely dragged into the movie as the typical New Girlfriend, and as you might expect ends up in danger.
In fact, I thought this movie was so bad, I couldn’t be bothered writing anything else except half-assed little snipes.
Keanu Reeves was pretty boring; his character was shallow and just.. boring – at no time was there any sort of terror inspired by his performance or character. Something else that bugged me was the starting theme with Keanu dancing around with some guns – Dragula, by Rob Zombie. Straight away I got the impression of Matrix-ness, which was further enhanced with Keanu’s frequent black leather trenchcoat appareil and a chase across a dark rooftop.
Overall, the whole thing was just too stupid – my taste in movies is pretty simple and I usually like movies that stick to the same sort of formula, but there was really nothing good at all to say about this. No good effects, no good acting, boring plot, uninspiring and totally unoriginal characters and a weak ending made this pretty much a waste of money.