Ok, let’s play a game: I am going to tell you about a film, and you guess its title.
A few characters sit around in a diner, discussing pointless minutiae about life. Then they burst out of the diner booth with big guns to rob the place. From here, the movie jumps back in time, and the story unfolds via flashbacks and interwoven plot lines. Over old-school surfer rock-and-roll music, freeze-frames introduce the main characters, and the movie stars Bruce Willis.
Did you say Pulp Fiction? Ha! Wrong!
The correct answer would be Catch .44–a straight to DVD, chock-full of clichés Pulp Fiction knock-off, which is bound to give you a painful flashback to the dark crime films of 1990′s. Think every Quintin Tarantino film of the 90′s with a sprinkling of Guy Ritchie–except almost 17 years too late, and that is Catch .44 in a nutshell.
Now, I ask myself, is there such a lack of original ideas and talent that people are still plagiarizing Pulp Fiction, complete with endless conversations about nothing, big-gun play, sexy editing, trite film-school credit sequence, and entwined stories?
Don’t be fooled at all by the fact that Catch .44 stars Bruce Willis and Forest Whitaker. Their roles are mere window dressing to lure you into a sea of second-rate cast with some of the most amateurish acting you have ever seen. Predictably, even though Willis is prominently featured on the Catch .44 DVD cover, the trailer, and any promotional item associated with this film, his actual appearance in Catch .44 is kept to a bare minimum.
And the plot? Oh, you know, no-one-is-as-they-seem, some deadly cat-and-mouse thing, some crime boss and a double-cross over a drug-deal and a robbery gone bad. The same old stale crap from the 90’s.
TK at Pajiba has the final word in his review of the upcoming Dec 20th DVD release of Catch .44
And I quote :
“If someone gave me this DVD for Christmas I’d use the disc to slice their throat open.”
So, do yourself a big favor; skip this film for sure.
