The Cold Light Of Day

There's more than a feeling of Hitchcock and recent European thrillers to Mabrouk El Mechri's The Cold Light Of Day as Wall Street trader Will Shaw (Henry Cavill) finds himself as the de-facto innocent man on the run when a family holiday in Spain goes the way of the Euro when Shaw's family's yacht disappears, along with his relations who were on board at the time. Before you can blink we're into a story line of useless cops, suspicious looking US Government Agents (Sigourney Weaver amongst them) and stereotypical locals as Shaw attempts to discover what has happened whilst also avoiding a bullet with his name on it. As you can probably already guess there's no surprises here, but El Mechri (who's last film was the well received, if bizarre, JCVD) doesn't totally drop the ball on what is in effect his debut feature in respect of having a few decent stars and a healthy budget to play with. He just that his safe direction means this is basically a thriller with very few thrills. However, on an intrigue level this does work quite well, as Shaw attempts to work out what has happened you are taken into the mystery as Scott Wiper and John Petro's script mostly only gives the audience the same amount of info as Shaw. That aside though the rest is pretty routine with bad characters and dodgy dialogue to the fore. Plus a Psycho-esque twist at the start is oddly telegraphed as well. It's sad to report that the worst thing of all though is Weaver, who appears to have given up reading scripts and has instructed her agent to say yes to anything which will only have her appear on screen for around 5 minutes (In 2011/2012 she's in nine films!). El Mechri is to blame really for the mis-casting, but watching Weaver swear whist manically driving an SUV through the streets of Madrid and firing off an automatic weapon at the same time is one of the odder things you'll see on the big screen this year. As for Cavill, he's a lot better here than he was in Immortals, but he's definitely going to up his game when he dons Superman's cape in 2013's Man Of Steel.

The OC Film Sting Final Verdict
Stupid, dumb, but in the cold light of day (boom boom), just not that much fun. Rating: 5/10.