As a hybrid of “Taken” (2008) and the recent surprise hit “Sound of Freedom,” director William Kaufman’s “Shrapnel,” however, is a failure on almost every possible level. Despite all the best intentions, Mr. Kaufman’s shoot-'em-up action-thriller wouldn’t pass muster as an effort from a first-year film student.
‘Shrapnel’
The south Texas-based Sean Beckwith (Jason Patric) receives a frantic phone call from his teen daughter saying she made a mistake. A muffled male voice is heard in the background and the call suddenly ends. Sean jumps into his muscle car and crosses the border into Juarez, Mexico, drives to an impound lot, and goes to directly her car. Sean opens the trunk and finds her sunglasses, then leaves, then returns with a policeman (who’s behaving as if he’s corrupt), and the car is gone.
Nothing About This Setup Works
The daughter said she made a mistake. By “mistake,” does that mean she ran off with a boy, was kidnapped, or something else? If she was kidnapped, why didn’t the kidnapper immediately confiscate her phone? I’m pretty sure this is covered in every Kidnapping 101 class.Nothing is shown or implied to suggest that Sean knew she was in Juarez or the exact location of her car. A low-jack might have been involved, maybe, but that possibility is also never mentioned. When the policeman asks for some kind of proof, Sean doesn’t think to give him the daughter’s glasses. None of it makes sense.
Can of Worms
Once Victor hears that Sean was a colonel in the Marines, he panics and orders his brother and right-hand man Carlos (Guillermo Ivan) to cross the border with dozens of thugs to murder Sean to “nip the problem in the bud” so to speak. This opens another narrative can of worms.Why would a big bad cartel honcho worry about a guy, Marine or not, who hasn’t threatened him? Victor lives in a fortified castle and could easily return the daughter, likely without being detected. Sending a posse to Sean’s home is the equivalent of kicking a hornet’s nest.
This is where Mr. Kaufman (the recent “Warhorse One”) in tandem with screenwriters Chad Law and Johnny Martin Walters begin ignoring the laws of physics and probability and outcome as it applies to the firing of automatic and semi-automatic weapons. Want to take a guess as to how this face-off ends?
The movie culminates with Sean and his former Marine underling Max (Cam Gigendet, the “Twilight” saga) doing what Carlos did but this time at Victor’s castle with predictably impossible-to-swallow results.
Inept Acting
Adding to the cartoon-level violence, wanton bloodshed, and disastrous storytelling, the acting from everyone (save for Mr. Patric and Mr. Gigendet) is laughably inept. The bad guys flex their bluster, grimace, and sneers and all of the female characters cower, wail, and shriek with maximum shrillness.The son of playwright (“That Championship Season”) and actor (“The Exorcist”) Jason Miller, and the maternal grandson of Jackie Gleason, Mr. Patric received raves for his early performances in the cult favorites “The Lost Boys” (1987) and “Rush” (1991).
Mr. Patric’s artistic and critical peak was in the superb but barely-seen 1998 black comedy “Your Friends & Neighbors” where he played a demented obstetrician, and since then his career has pretty much sputtered and stalled.
As bad as it is, “Shrapnel” could lead to (relatively) better paychecks and higher visibility in Mr. Patric’s future. At 57, he’s just one year older than Liam Neeson was when he did “Taken” and, let’s be honest here, thespian range is not the premiere requisite for being a leading man in movies of this ilk.
The lantern jaw, the perfect beard stubble, the thousand-yard stare, the alternating monotone and bellowing delivery, the ability to appear to know how to operate weapons of all sorts, and being easy on the eyes is what it takes, and Mr. Patric checks all of those boxes.
Emerging smelling spring fresh from such a fetid stinker is a feat in itself and this should capture the attention of filmmakers and studios looking for the next AARP action hero. Mr. Patric has the goods; all he needs is a screenplay that doesn’t appear to be cobbled together by fourth graders.
