Josh Duhamel certainly carried this film the best he could with what he had to work with, but he needed better backing to be the action lead star he deserves to be. The writing and directing was that of a 1980's amateur-hour film. Constant cheesy slow-mo shots with the most tedious cat and mouse game ever - don't even get me started on the ridiculous dialogue.
Actor turned filmmaker Sam Macaroni, who has an astonishing 89 directing credits - all mostly short films and TV movies, still hasn't learned how to properly fill in any runtime that's over an hour long. Along with the Blue Bloods series and a handful of short films writer Van B. Nguyen, they stretched out every scene to the max with little meat in the story that had long dragged out scenes and mostly unnecessary dialogue.
The action shots were all boilerplate cliched, and all the back and forth cat and mouse narrative became very annoying fast. An example is when Omar Chaparro's character Eddie wasted 5 minutes of film talking to the doctor to get Cain to remember; ok we get it, just say "get it done or else". You'll see that issue of squeezing every scene to its fullest throughout the entire normally comfortable 91 min runtime, of which felt much longer due to the lack of any real captivating narrative. And that's not including the many cheesy slow-mo's that added another wasted 10-15 mins of runtime for no reason.
It's all a boilerplate by the numbers story that's mainly filler with very little substance. All the attempts at any twists in the story were predictable and also cliched. This entire mess should've been cut down to a 1 hour TV movie length at best, if not into a short film.
The only redeeming qualities this film had was the acting, some decent action choreography by Duhamel, and an adequate score - for a B film. It was great to see the legendary Nolte, but even he needed better cast direction to speed up his slow and slurred dialogue, because one can only take so much before they start yelling "spit it out already".
Had the writer and director at least consulted a seasoned filmmaker for some much needed changes, this film would've been much more watchable. But as is, it's a very generous 5/10, all going to the underrated Duhamel for another convincing lead performance (he was a great lead in Bandit as well).
Plot summary
A man wakes in a hospital with no memory, and quickly finds himself on the run in a locked down hospital with the Cartel on his tail. He scrambles to find his true identity in the most vicious way.
Uploaded by: FREEMAN
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A perfect example of poor filmmaking.
Low budget is not an excuse
This movie has B/A list actors yet the script and some scenes are awful. Completely cliché and disjointed at the same time. Budget is not an excuse. There are action movies that have way lower budget and were at least interesting if not gripping: Hardcore Henry, Upgrade, The Raid (only 1million),etc. I've even seen better stuff from Youtube creators. Josh Duhamel should just stick to romantic comedies and light hearted stuff like the Mighty Ducks. He hardly felt dangerous or menacing in action roles. Abbie Cornish's acting was also was disinterested and looked like she was just in for the paycheck.
Low buget relying on 1 A-lister to help sell:
Bad writing, dialogue & acting. Only the main character is the only good actor in this film... so many things that don't make any sense in this film such as: #1 All this gun fighting going on inside a U. S. hospital yet where is the security or law enforcement!?! #2 Certain hospital wings have staff in the hallways yet others are completely empty. #3 The scene involving the DEA agent who sounds like he's straining every time he speaks stating in the conference room that "their on foreign soil" when it comes to implications to extracting the main character Cain & later on stating that to the main character is in a Mexican hospital when on the phone with him... wtf! Their in Tuscan AZ!