A disgraced doctor and his family are held hostage at their home by criminals on the run when a robbery-gone-awry requires them to seek immediate medical attention.
Bruce Willis, the man who starred in the “Die Hard” franchise as well as other big hits like “Pulp Fiction,” “Armageddon,” and “The Sixth Sense,” is now resigned to appearing in films such as “Precious Cargo,” “10 Minutes Gone,” “Extraction,” and “Trauma Center,” titles you probably never heard of and will more than likely never see. And that’s a good thing because most of them are absolutely horrendous. Willis joins the ranks of Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Steven Seagal, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Dolph Lundgren, John Travolta, and Nicolas Cage whose once-blossoming action movie careers are now relegated to straight-to-DVD and pay-per-view titles. And you can add “Survive the Night” to that prestigious list too.
It appears nowadays Willis is more interested in cashing those paychecks for appearing in conventional and wholly unoriginal scripts instead of waiting for something unique to come along. Willis gotta eat! To to be perfectly honest though, he does manage to pop up in the occasional big-screen hit like “Death Wish” and “Glass” but they are far and few between.
In “Survive the Night,” even though he gets top-billing, he is nothing more than a supporting character while Chad Michael Murray unsuccessfully tries to steal the show as the film’s protagonist. Murray plays Rich, a doctor who lives in the country with his wife Jan (Lydia Hull) and teenage daughter Riley (Riley Wolfe Rach). The trio live with Rich’s parents, Frank and Rachel (Bruce Willis and Jessica Abrams) as they have just moved from the city and are searching for a place of their own. One night, two armed and dangerous brothers, Mathias and Jamie (Tyler Jon Olson and Shea Buckner), are on their way to Mexico after pulling off a deadly bank heist. When they stop at a convenience store to fill up, they are recognized by the store clerk and a shootout erupts. They kill the clerk as well as a customer but Mathias is shot in the leg in the process. Back on the road, they stop at an emergency room and Jamie makes his way inside and overhears a conversation between Rich and a co-worker, realizing that Rich is a doctor. He and Mathias wait in their car until Rich leaves for the night and they follow him to his house. The two brothers wait until everyone is asleep and then break into the house, with the intent of having Rich treat Jamie’s leg. When they make their way inside, Jamie inadvertently kills Rachel after she surprises him and he proceeds to tie up the rest of the family.
Rich is brought into the living room by Jamie and shown Mathias, who is laid out on the table in front of him. Jamie informs him that if he stops the bleeding and takes care of his leg, they will leave them quietly and be on their way but Rich and Frank comprehend that they have no intention of leaving peacefully and will kill them all before the night is over. While Rich begins to operate on Mathias’ leg, Frank, a retired sheriff, tries to formulate a plan that will result in the family’s escape but things don’t go well and he must devise a new tactic if they are to survive the night.
Writer Doug Wolfe obviously stole the plot from Robert Rodriguez’s “From Dusk Till Dawn” in regards to two criminal brothers who after a bloody bank heist, head straight to Mexico. Along the way, the psychopathic brother randomly kills people while the older brother tries to restrain him. It’s a good thing that Wolfe decided to stop there and cut out the vampires, otherwise, God forbid, people might have noticed the similarities!!! There is absolutely nothing original in “Survive the Night.” It is filled with cliché after stereotypical cliché and not one element of the story is unconventional. Willis and Murray sleepwalk their way through the film and while Shea Buckner as the deranged Jamie manages to infuse his role with occasional frenzied character traits, sometimes chillingly, after a while, their constant usage gets old and his maniacal outbursts become yawn-inducing. For a better time, watch “From Dusk Till Dawn” instead.
Available on Blu-ray™ (plus Digital) and DVD July 21st from Lionsgate
