Reprisal (2018)

Bank manager Jacob (Frank Grillo) is having a bit of a bad time. His bank is robbed by a violent guy operating in a military style (who the audience will soon enough see is being played by Jonathon Schaech), with little he or anyone else can do about it. The perpetrator seems to be a serial operator, too, leaving empty banks and dead bodies behind without the police getting any closer to him.

The special unit chasing him does vaguely seem to insinuate that Jacob may have sold information to the robber, but don’t follow up on this after the first interview at all. Still, that’s apparently enough to get Jacob put on indefinite leave. Because having to spend time with his beautiful wife (Olivia Culpo) and dramatically diabetic daughter (Natalia Sophie Butler) is clearly not good enough for him, he begins to obsess about the robbery, starting his own investigation into it and the ones that came before. He also involves his retired police neighbour James (Bruce Willis) in this business, whose help will be rather useful once Jacob actually manages to get much closer to his prey than the police ever do.

Of course, this being the kind of film it is, this also puts Jacob’s family in dire danger.

Bruce Willis does not seem to take his descent into the realms of low budget action cinema about one degree, sometimes two, classier than the one Dolph Lundgren or JCVD cameo their ways through, terribly gracefully. He is usually looking bored and tired in these movies, seldom deigning to do that acting thing he has nominally been hired for, which tends to be enough for the producers of these things as long as they can slap his name on the cover. Digital one-sheet? You know what I mean. Willis clearly is no Cuba Gooding Jr. in his regard, who will approach even a crappy role in a terrible movie with as much seriousness as he can gather (which is good for Gooding Jr., because it doesn’t look like his off-screen behaviour will do him any favours for a future career), nor a Nicolas Cage who will bring as much craziness as is appropriate or more if you ask him to.

So it’s something of a positive surprise that Willis approaches his supporting role in Brian A. Miller’s Reprisal with a comparative degree of enthusiasm. He’s still looking pretty tired but puts enough basic acting moves on display to mandate a friendly nod from this long-time fan. Of course, he is standing next to Frank Grillo who doesn’t shy away from being good in films good, bad or mediocre, cheap or Marvel, even if a film just demands of him to get a bit nervy and obsessed. The film also features a pretty interesting villain performance by Schaech that provides the character with just enough actual human traits he becomes more than just a plot device shooting guns.

The script, as should be obvious by my plot description, doesn’t even try to do anything complex or original with its worn genre tropes, but it is decently paced and structured competently, so the film can move through its clichés unimpeded by awkwardness.

Miller’s direction is appropriately straightforward, with some montage-style intercutting being the most interesting thing he does. Though it is not doing anything artistically interesting, his work is generally competent, apart from a tendency to go too much into the old shaky-cam manoeuvre in the action scenes, in the usual weird assumption that not being able to see properly will read to an audience as being directly in the thick of things. The film’s not too bad about this, fortunately, so there’s at least little danger of headaches for the long-suffering viewer of cheapish action films.


Reprisal is a decently made movie that’s perfectly watchable when one is in the mood for undemanding action in the crime thriller mold, but does let its willing cast down a bit by not providing them with much to get their teeth into.