10 Minutes Gone, a 2019 action-crime movie “starring” Bruce Willis, but actually starring Michael Chiklis, is inexplicably in Netflix’s Top 10. Large portions of Willis’ relatively recent films are direct-to-video/streaming/obscurity rent-an-aging-action-star action-crime thrillers; you must also be aware that he was diagnosed with aphasia, a neurological disorder, and announced his retirement in 2022, a year in which his name is on 11 similar projects (with two more coming in 2023 – he must have stacked up a lot of these movies before calling it quits). I’ve watched several of these Tangentially Willis Movies, so the question for this one is whether or not it can be distinguished from the others. I have reservations.
A group imbibes alcohol and devises a plan to enter a bank with firearms and masks, steal something that is not theirs, and then flee swiftly. Frank (Chiklis), dubbed the Best Lock Man Outside of New York, and his buddy Joe (Tyler Jon Olson) head up this mug – they’ll go in the back, attach a beeping device to the large safe, and twirl the knob until it opens, while Mitchell (John Hickman), Griffin (Kyle Schmid), and Baxter (Baxter Temmel) point guns at security guards and yell at tellers to keep Easy. Out and in. The typical behavior of the antagonist, as seen in every movie. Unless everything goes to hell, which typically does in many films. In fact, if nothing goes wrong, the movie may have no purpose to exist at all. However! What if it wasn’t all for naught? Would we be surprised favorably? If a direct-to-video/streaming/obscurity rent-an-aging-action-star action-crime thriller was about a heist that went off without a hitch and didn’t result in overtime for the coroner, and our anti-hero protagonists took their money to an obscure Mexican beach and retired, what would the film be about? If the film was about their retirement and how they learnt to knit and play the glockenspiel, then: It could end up being an Oscar contender.
Alas, no knitting. It all falls apart. The police arrive earlier than anticipated. When bullets are fired into sensitive parts of the human body, they are fatal. Frank and Joe retrieve the loot, a metal box containing diamonds, and proceed out the back door to execute Escape Plan B until they are struck from behind. Frank awakens with a severe headache. Joe is in a dire situation; he was killed when bullets were fired into his sensitive places. Rex (Willis), their supervisor in a room atop a skyscraper, is not pleased with this turn of events. He rants at a character (Texas Battle) whose sole purpose is to exchange information with him. Then he sends his cleaner, Ivory (Lydia Hull), to prowl around like the Terminatress, coolly killing individuals by putting bullets into their bodies in sensitive spots, and also exploding things and coolly walking away from the exploding items.
So. What went incorrect? Frank decides that there must have been a rat and that he is being set up as the patsy. He snatches Joe’s girlfriend Claire (Meadow Williams) to prevent her from being killed by gunshots fired into etc. etc. They search down the three other men on the work so that they may fire first, and then they discuss who was the rat. This entails numerous exchanges of hardboiled language (“It was all clear until I went postal,” “Why you f—in’ with my sunny disposition, Frank,” etc.) and reiterations of the theft from their perspective, at which point the plot becomes ever-so-slightly Rashomonesque (until the third guy, where they just give up on rehashing the same shootout sequence from a couple different angles). Frank’s mission does not end well, especially for the several individuals that are killed. Will this story conclude with a massive twist or what?
What Films Does It Remind You Of? : Comparisons to Kurosawa, Heat, or The Bank Job are excessively kind. But other than that, 10 Minutes Gone is a frustratingly repetitive B-minus action-thriller genre exercise that evokes nothing in particular. Let’s assume it contains 1.73 Heat-inspired shots and proceed.
Worth Observing: Hull’s portrayal of a cold-blooded killer is so campy that you half-expect her to break character like Jimmy Fallon in a Saturday Night Live spoof.
Memorable Dialogue: “None of us would be here today if we didn’t believe in honor among thieves,” says Rex, establishing the film’s big irony, which is explosive in the sense that it is so blatantly obvious that it is like headbutting a landmine.
Skin and Sexuality: None.
There is an entire Hollywood industrial complex dedicated to producing trash like 10 Minutes Gone: Small budget. Locations of production in states that offer tax benefits. Often produced by sketchmeister Randall Emmett. Casts chosen from a pool of B-movie extras (Olson, Hull, Williams, Temmel and others turn up often in these things). A quasi-celebrity like Bruce Willis (or Mel Gibson, Robert De Niro, or Thomas Jane), flown in to shoot a couple of quickie moments — frequently talky and hence removed from the action — in a hurry-up, cash-in fashion. And for unexplainable reasons — aside acute boredom, epidemics of poor taste, and/or mass brainwashing — these films sometimes make Netflix’s Top 10.
Now, if 10 Minutes Gone contained a hint of campiness, it may be a moderately feasible form of entertainment. But it takes itself seriously enough to render it tasteless mush, with a bland mosaic of faceless individuals repeating dull speech and occasionally firing at each other amid vaguely intelligible action sequences with lotsa edits and conspicuous shaky cam. There is usually an excessive death count and a scene laced with severe LENS FLARE, so at least one of the numerous tropes employed is “artsy” in nature. If you view it, expect to forget it almost immediately.
Our Advice: AVOID IT. 10 Minutes Gone is so basic, it should arrive in a black-and-white box stating “Heist-Gone-Wrong Movie.”
John Serba is a freelance writer and film reviewer residing in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com.