Bloodthirsty villains brutalise a young family in their hunt for loot in this reprehensible addition to the home invasion genre
This is a nasty, brutish, not-short-enough action film; basically one of those home-invasion stories in which brutal criminals terrorise a family. In this case the crims are led by newly released convict Johnny (Mickey Rourke, looking more melted than usual) and the family is a nuclear set-up led by James Baker (Michael Jai White), a DEA agent with PTSD. Johnny and co are supposedly trying is to recover money from a bank robbery, hidden years ago.
But in this generally reprehensible subgenre, it doesn’t matter why the baddies break in. What matters is that it entitles at least one member of the terrorised family to fight back using their unique skills and, inevitably, armed force. Conspiracy-minded viewers might wonder if some of these films aren’t subsidised by pro-gun lobbyists as a way to drum fear into the audience and maintain support for the right to keep huge home arsenals to ward against a danger with a vanishingly small probability in the real world.