DETECTIVE KNIGHT: ROGUE

CONTAINS SPOILERS AND SADNESS

It's always sad when big stars and big names bow out on projects that aren't worthy of them: you always hate for a terrible movie to be the last one with your favourite actors or by your favourite directors and you always hope that they've one last decent movie left in them. In the case of this curtain call for Bruce Willis it's doubly affecting: not only is this DTV cops-and-robbers nonsense a poor career-closer for him, but it's patently and tragically clear that they're struggling to work around the aphasia that led Willis to announce his retirement last year. Much of the film is devoted to other characters, his cop partner does much of the legwork, and the dialogue scenes that Knight has are blatantly edited around him, leaving him as a half-presence, a near blank, a guest star role in his own film. Strictly speaking this isn't Willis' actual swansong: it's the first of a Knight trilogy and while the other instalments (Redemption and Independence) are on my rental queue, in all honesty I'm not sure I want to see them.

For a good chunk of the running time Detective Knight: Rogue is actually another take on Michael Mann's Heat. Edward Drake is not Michael Mann and this has none of the character, intrigue, excitement or suspense of Heat - it doesn't even have gorgeous cinematography or a terrific soundtrack. It has a ruthless gang of masked bank robbers whose latest heist ends in gunfire and leaves Knight's partner on life support. The robbery was at the behest of crime lord Winna (Michael Eklund) who has history with Knight; Knight and his new partner head for New York before Winna's next Big Job...

Like Heat, time is spent with the bad guys' crew but their personal issues and problems aren't anywhere near as interesting. Their leader Rhodes (Beau Mirchoff) is a former sports star and painkiller addict who's in it for the adrenaline rush more than anything but doesn't like the increased Heat that comes from shooting down police officers - yeah, whatever, you're a bank robber and my sympathy for you is minimal. And because you don't care and you're not interested the action sequences have no impact - even if they weren't blandly staged machine gun shootouts. The Winna/Knight backstory is gabbled off in exposition and flashback and none of it sticks. And if they think they're honouring the legacy and legend of Die Hard they're way off - the Next Big Job is the theft of a rare baseball card and wasn't that the McGuffin of Cop Out?!?

I always like Bruce Willis: even though he was in action hero mode for so many movies he always looked, sounded and behaved like a vaguely regular person rather than an Arnie or a Sly, who don't seem to actually belong to the real world, and he didn't have the martial arts skills of a Jean-Claude (or even Steven Seagal). I always liked him even in movies that didn't work or didn't succeed: I'm one of the nine people on Earth who thought Hudson Hawk was unfairly maligned. But those days are long gone and so, sadly, is Willis, and this just isn't worthy of what he was.

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JEEPERS CREEPERS: REBORN

CONTAINS SOME SPOILERS

Let's be honest: we didn't really need another trip to the Creeper well. Three was stretching it further than necessary: the ideas, such as they were, had run out in the first two films. They were efficient enough monster movies with a few novel twists and a healthy lashing of splatter, but there was nothing in them that warranted an extended franchise series. Indeed, given creator Victor Salva's history there was a strong argument for binning it altogether and walking away and pretending it never happened. But they couldn't leave it alone and now here's the fourth, least, weirdest and hopefully last of them. Salva isn't credited anywhere on the UK Blu and while new director Timo (Iron Sky) Vuorensola had stated that Salva "would not be involved or benefiting from the production", elsewhere on the film's IMDb trivia page it suggests he "received a monetary percentage for renting his license".

Jeepers Creepers: Reborn features a dumbass horror nerd and his long-suffering girlfriend on a road trip to a frankly tedious outdoor horror festival with people dressed up as Pennywise and Beetlejuice. They end up winning the big raffle and a trip to the legendary Creeper's house, unaware that the draw was rigged so the Creeper can get at her unborn child. Mysteriously the Creeper can't wait for them to get there and starts picking the festival's camera crew off while they're still unaccountably wandering through the spooky graveyard in the middle of the night...

It's even weirder than that: much of the second half of the film has a strange unreal feeling to it. That's because they've opted to shoot vast chunks of it in green screen and then pasted a CG house in around them, rather than find a location that actually exists, or build one. The result is a videogame atmosphere where half of the scenery looks like it isn't really there - because it isn't. Which wouldn't be such a bad thing if it looked better, but the unreality just leaps out at you. It's also confused about what it is: it's not a proper sequel because dialogue refers to the in-Universe existence of the three Jeepers Creepers movies Salva made about the Creeper, but the production design department has stuffed the Creeper's house with props and references to those films.

You don't even get a rendition of the Jeepers Creepers song (presumably they couldn't get the rights). You do get an opening bit with Dee Wallace, you get some grue and splatter, you get an impressive looking monster, but you get absolutely no reason to rustle up any interest beyond wondering why they went for the CG look and, maybe, whether they're going to milk this thing any further. I would hope not: there's nothing there to milk any more. A British-American-Finnish co-production and bizarrely shot in all of them.

**