THE MISFITS (2021) - Movie Review

Director: Renny Harlin
Starring: Pierce Brosnan, Rami Jaber, Hermione Corfield, Jamie Chung, Mike Angelo, Tim Roth, Nick Cannon
Genre: Adventure, Comedy, Action, Thriller
Writer: Kurt Wimmer, Robert Henny
Runtime: 94 min
Rated: R for some language/sexual references and brief drug use
Buy This Movie: Blu-ray (Amazon), Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV

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Synopsis:

After being recruited by a group of unconventional thieves, renowned criminal Richard Pace finds himself caught up in an elaborate gold heist that promises to have far-reaching implications on his life and the lives of countless others.

Review:

Hoping to be the next "Ocean's Eleven", Renny Harlin's heist action comedy "The Misfits" is one of those rare irredeemable movies that starts bad and progressively gets worse. In a nutshell, the movie's plot follows a professional thief (Pierce Brosnan), who is recruited by a mysterious figure known only as The Prince (Rami Jaber) to lead a daring gold heist with political ramifications in the fictional country of Jazeristan. To this end he will have to work alongside a loud mouth bank robber (Nick Cannon), an explosives expert (Mike Angelo), a man-hating assassin (Jamie Chung), and his own daughter (Hermione Corfield) who shares her father's profession.

Harlin, a veteran of action cinema who directed films like "Die Hard 2", "Cliffhanger", "The Long Kiss Goodnight" and "Deep Blue Sea", still knows how to put together a decent action sequence, but that's hardly enough when there are so few of them in "The Misfits". The movie starts out with no less than 20 minutes of relentless exposition at the end of which I was utterly confused about what was going on and bored out of my mind. As soon as something remotely interesting happens, the movie stops for even more narration and exposition, which just drove me crazy.

The script by Kurt Wimmer ("Equilibrium", "Law Abiding Citizen") and Robert Henny ("Who's Your Caddy?") is a horribly convoluted mess of characters and motivations that are both ridiculous and uninteresting. For a 90-minute movie, it sure felt longer. The cast isn't helping, either. Most of them are horribly miscast, Brosnan looks completely lost, and Cannon's performance is the lamest and cringiest attempt at comedy I've seen in a long time. Even Roth as the movie's villain delivers a lifeless performance, and he usually relishes playing the bad guy.

Shot in Abu Dhabi and Dubai, the movie looks like a glorified UAE tourism infomercial, which no doubt helped keep the movie's budget down while ensuring a luxurious and exotic look for the movie. Unfortunately everything that isn't a famous location looks like a cheap B-movie set. The production values make those old made-for-TV movies look like $200 million blockbusters. The heist itself is beyond straining credibility, and feels like it was written by a grade-schooler. Meanwhile, the twists are so predictable, it's like having the ability to see the future.

"The Misfits" is a complete trainwreck of a movie. There is nothing salvageable about this movie at all ! It's an uninspired disaster from top to bottom and deserves to disappear into oblivion.

SCORE: 2/10