Movie Review: Wild Card

Genre: Crime Drama

Rating: **1/2

Cast: Jason Statham, Michael Angarano, Stanley Tucci

Director: Simon West

Language: English




Jason Statham still has a career because films like Wild Card exist. Based on the 1985 book Heat and a remake of the Burt Reynolds starrer, it is set in Las Vegas, and begins in a diner where Nick Wild (Statham) appears to be doing odd jobs for a living.

The action then moves to a hospital emergency room where a battered girl calls out for Nick repeatedly. We then discover that Nick has taken up the job of protecting millionaire Cyrus Kinnick (Angarano) and showing him around Vegas.

Somewhere around here, it is revealed that the girl has been raped by gangster Danny DeMarco (Milo Ventimiglia), and Nick, very reluctantly (note), agrees to help his friend out in seeking revenge. This is the part where you start questioning all the choices made by all the parties involved.

However, a secondary plot is already unfolding. Nick is also a recovering gambling addict who is not exactly recovering. The talented Hope Davis and Stanley Tucci then swoop in, but even they cannot salvage this already derailed train.

For an action film, there is little action to thrill and what is there, is set to songs like 'Blue Christmas', 'White Christmas' and other slow-burning Christmases in between. If it was an attempt at a stylised homage to the other successful action franchises or even its own predecessor, it fails squarely.

Some of the more gratuitous scenes go on for too long and become cringeworthy. Even Vegas, that can usually be a character in itself, is shown with much neglect and fails to rally a viewer to get invested.

West (Con Air, Lara Croft) seems to be out of his element here and it doesn't help that the cast fails to deliver on performances entirely.

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