Production designer obviously not seen a real NYC police station, but apparently she managed Shots, everything about the locations and sets betrays its Toronto origins. Gridlocked is nominally set in New York, but except for overhead establishing To its logical conclusion and invented a story set in a Canadian city with Canadian cops, villainsĪnd motivations. Ungar might have done better if he'd pursued his notion of making a Canadian action film Glover utter a variation on Murtagh's signature phrase ("I'm too old", etc.) at a critical juncture in the plot, it doesn't Murtagh, appearsĪs the senior security guard who serves as the police facility's gatekeeper. Gridlocked's biggest miscalculation, Danny Glover, Lethal Weapon's own Sgt. Summarily execute an innocent pair of elderly bystanders?īroken Arrow. Seize control of a nearby structure asĪ base of operations? Die Hard 2. You watch with academic detachment,Ĭataloguing the plot devices lifted from other, better films. (Today he's best known as Col.ĭespite the best efforts of the weapons coordinators and stuntpeople, Gridlocked never risesĪbove its antecedents, because Ungar never stamps either the players or the caper with enoughĭistinctiveness to give the film its own identity. The same actor who filled the villain's role in the earlier film. In yet another callback to The Hard Way, Korver is played by Stephen Lang, Installation is attacked by commandos led by Korver, whose identity and motive are only Woods and former WWE wrestler Trish Stratus), when the Hendrix has taken Brody there to meet his The failure of the Brody/Hendrix interplay to generate sparks saps Gridlocked ofĮnergy even before the mismatched pair find themselves caught up in a siege of a police trainingįacility that becomes the film's Nakatomi Plaza. Instead of externalizing hisįrustration, Purcell's Hendrix is a stolid, interior figure who suffers mostly in silence, lacking theĭynamism of Bruce Willis, Mel Gibson or even Steven Seagal (before he began phoning in his That James Woods brought to the equivalent part in Badham's film. Hackman's Brody is convincing enough as a shallow narcissist, but Purcell doesn't have the flair With some community service after punching out a reporter. (Cody Hackman, an alumnus of director Ungar's first feature), who needs to rehabilitate his image Waiting out a medical suspension after being shot on the job. Here, the cop isĭavid Hendrix (Dominic Purcell), the leader of an NYPD SWAT team, who is impatiently With some minor tinkering, Gridlocked borrows the central device of John Badham's The Hard Way, where a veteran cop is ordered to babysit a spoiled movie star. (the latter being familiar territory to Ungar from his first feature, the MMA-themed Tapped Out), but ultimately it's a tame affair. Gridlocked dutifully racks up scene after scene of gunplay and martial arts In a Canadian film, but that doesn't mean much to a 2016 audience accustomed to decades of Notes from the film's distributor, Magnolia Pictures, Gridlocked set a record for onscreen gunfire Wikipedia, which is backed up on this point by press Gridlocked is the second feature by Canadian writer/director Allan Ungar, who wanted toĮmulate the style of action movies that inspired him growing up, especially the Die Hard and To learn more about how and for what purposes Amazon uses personal information (such as Amazon Store order history), please visit our Privacy Notice.Reviewed by Michael Reuben, June 16, 2016 You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie Preferences, as described in the Cookie Notice. Click ‘Customise Cookies’ to decline these cookies, make more detailed choices, or learn more. Third parties use cookies for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalised ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products. This includes using first- and third-party cookies, which store or access standard device information such as a unique identifier. If you agree, we’ll also use cookies to complement your shopping experience across the Amazon stores as described in our Cookie Notice. We also use these cookies to understand how customers use our services (for example, by measuring site visits) so we can make improvements. We use cookies and similar tools that are necessary to enable you to make purchases, to enhance your shopping experiences and to provide our services, as detailed in our Cookie Notice.
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