Originally published on metropolis.co.jp on June 2012

Joel Schumacher, who has made some pretty exciting movies in his time (but not recently), now offers us this hugely generic, astoundingly pointless home-invasion thriller starring Nicolas Cage and Nicole Kidman, a B-movie with A-list credentials, if you will. The isolated home of a diamond merchant (such homes are always isolated) is attacked by a gang of bickering, unorganized and poorly masked bad guys who first want diamonds, then cash, then just one of his wife’s kidneys. (Guy’s got some kinda negotiating skills.) It’s jerky, noisy, chaotic, overacted, and most of the dialogue is yelled.