It's hard to really pin down what The Cold Light of Day is supposed to achieve. It reads like a concept reel for emerging leading man Henry Cavill who will proceed to star as Superman in next year's Man of Steel but it makes so many concessions to the sensibilities of a spy movie that it's never going to be a real jumping point for Cavill. Director Mabrouk El Mechri is almost entirely to blame here, making the most unremarkable decisions that force us to reexamine the intrinsic cleverness of spy fiction. The result is a watery, meandering spy movie that manages even at its best moments to be completely ordinary.

Will Shaw (Henry Cavill) is barely a day into his vacation in Spain when financial problems at home in San Francisco threaten to shorten the trip. After a dispute with his father (Bruce Willis) on the family's rented boat, Will decides to swim ashore for a break. He returns to find his family gone and a call for help at the local police station ends in more trouble. Discovering that he can recover his kidnapped family by giving up a certain briefcase, Will must beat the clock to unravel the underlying mystery but not before he encounters corrupted CIA agent (Sigourney Weaver) and his lost sister (Verónica Echegui).

On one hand, it's easy to be enthusiastic about engrossing yourself in the story but on the other, The Cold Light of Day gives very few reasons why you should. Better spy movies have thrived on providing viewers with at least some clue on what motivates each character to retrieve an important object, kill a person or escape from capture so the audience can make sense of what transpires on screen. The Cold Light of Day, quite questionably, never reveals or alludes to the life-or-death contents of the briefcase, meaning the biggest difficulty is in believing the necessity of all the carnage. It's perfectly reasonable that Will is willing to fire his first shot and participate in a mad car chase only because he wants to save his family. But it's hardly convincing to have pockets of mercenaries and agents chasing a briefcase that might as well be empty.

Such is the silliness of The Cold Light of Day that it often struggles to establish what exactly any of its characters intend to accomplish. If Weaver's character is indeed the CIA agent she claims to be, then she must be the dumbest agent to ever be enlisted. With the briefcase already tucked away in her car seat, she turns a mission-accomplished situation into a senseless civilian killing spree as she trades car paint with Will's vehicle down the busy streets of Madrid. Spy movies usually ask the audience to forgive some disbelief in order to enjoy them but The Cold Light of Day is by far the most demanding. The slightest bit of investigation into the weak plot will crumble the movie faster than a fragile egg tart.

Fortunately, there remains a vestige of believability in Will. As an innocent civilian unwittingly hooked into a web of dangerous games between mercenaries and agents, Cavill brings a sort of genuine clumsiness to his role, allowing the audience to easily buy his character. For this reason, there won't be any explosive set-piece or many scenes featuring hand-to-hand combat. There're a few tricks to prevent the action scenes from becoming too stale and while some of the stunts are decent efforts, others don't always work. Handcuffed between the tragic decision to set most of the action scenes in the night and the already blurry shots of fast-moving action taken by hand-held cameras, you would be hard pressed to find any shot of action that isn't obscured in any way.

It's a shame because The Cold Light of Day has a talented cast which can actually do justice to the action. However, none of them bothers to offer a performance that's required to make other scenes work. Cavill comes across poorly as a man who's truly shocked that his family's been kidnapped, responding to a call from the kidnappers with an uncanny calmness while Weaver maintains a surprisingly stoical composure throughout. Willis's character is quickly written out of the story before he could show his acting chops. In a year filled with other spy movies like Total Recall, The Bourne Legacy and the upcoming Bond film, The Cold Light of Day looks like a distant relative.

Apparently, the screenwriters had several patterns (incl. the Bourne and Die Hard movies) and wanted to mix them for the basis of something at least as good, but did not succeed: the result is a porridge of this and that and the logic of events and motives is doubtful and inscrutable (e.g. suitcase-related events, a small business becoming a wild hero within half a day, long car chases without any police visible). The ending is also trivial and expected, luckily, the length of the movie is 1,5 hours only. The City of Madrid provides joy of recognition to them who have visited it.

The characters are not well deliberated either and it is astonishing why such great actors Sigourney Weaver and Bruce Willis agreed to star in such a movie... Nevertheless, the are pleasant to watch. The remaining cast, including the main performer Henry Cavill, is nothing special, not catchy at all.

The Cold Light of Day can kill your time, but you can easily avoid it. Even 2012 provided dozens much better action movies.

Saw 'The Cold Light of Day' due to having an appreciation, if not exactly love, for action films. Also quite liked the idea for the film and with talent like Bruce Willis and Sigourney Weaver, responsible for two of film's most iconic roles (Willis with 'Die Hard' and Weaver with the 'Alien' films) one would think that it is hard to go wrong with them involved. So 'The Cold Light of Day' had potential to be halfway decent.

Halfway decent 'The Cold Light of Day' was not. By all means it is not unwatchable but to me and many others it was not a good film, wasting its potential in a big way and it does not do a good job at all making the premise believable or giving the talented cast anything worthwhile. These are my genuine feelings, giving 'The Cold Light of Day' a fair chance and actually wanting to enjoy it. There are just too many things done right for me to do so.

'The Cold Light of Day' has a few salvageable elements. The locations are beautiful to look at and show some gritty atmosphere too. The film does start off promisingly with a little excitement and grit and attempts at character building.

Willis and Joseph Mawle give the best performances. Both don't have an awful lot to work with, for someone who was top billed in marketing (most likely to draw in a wider audience to see it) Willis is dispatched too early and Mawle's role is underwritten. Both do the best they can, Mawle has some menace and Willis takes it seriously without being too serious or tired.

Cannot say the same for the rest of the cast. Henry Cavill is one bland and wooden lead and spends the whole time looking confused. Weaver has very little to do in a role that's both insipid and strange and has no menace or enthusiasm whatsoever, a real mix of ham and phoning in. The female lead overdoes it and can't remember everybody else. The characters are derivative ciphers and too underdeveloped with motivations that are barely there (what there are are silly and hard to take). Some also act stupidly, with some of the most incompetent and stupid writing for police officers in film. The direction has very little gusto or confidence and while the locations are great the filming and editing are utter chaos and look direct to video quality. The music and sound are often far too loud, too constant and often are ill-fitting while the blatant product placement that can be seen is distracting.

A couple of exciting action sequences are far outweighed by ones that have no tension, suspense or surprises and the chaotic filming and editing make them hard to follow the already uninspired and messy staging that is too closely indebted to the film they took inspiration from. The story is cardboard thin, far-fetched (the decision making towards the end are facepalm inducing) and erratically paced, most of the time rather dull thanks to useless padding while being rushed towards the easily foreseeable ending (every bit as predictable as the far too early and obvious reveal of the culprit). It is also confused as a result of trying to throw in far too much, some of which irrelevant to the story and coming over as pointless as additions. The script is cheese and cliché-ridden with no natural flow, much of it is impossible to take at face value.

On the whole, rather mediocre but not a complete waste of time. 4/10 Bethany Cox