A Day to Die Parent Guide

After a disastrous hostage rescue gone badly awry, former Marine Connor (Kevin Dillon) finds himself working as a parole officer in Jackson, Mississippi. When a parolee of his is assaulted, Connor is forced to kill the assailant – and gets into a world of trouble. The assailant worked for local crime boss Pettis (Leon Robinson), a dangerous man at the best of times, who now expects Connor to pay him back for the lost income his employee would have provided. Having lost his job over the shooting and without any savings, Connor is going to be hard pressed to come up with the two million dollars Pettis expects from him. The price for failure is going to be even higher, though: Pettis has taken Connor’s pregnant wife, Candace (Brooke Butler) as insurance, and failure to come up with the money is a death sentence for her.

But look, don’t sweat the details. The movie doesn’t really know where it’s going with any of this, so there’s no sense in the audience caring. In fact, the film barely understands the concept of coherent storytelling so it’s best that you don’t try to follow anything that’s happening. This is especially alarming, considering that three different people are listed as writers. You’d think that at least one of them would have a basic grasp of storytelling, but you’d be wrong. But don’t take my word for it: while Connor is trying to save his African-American parolee, the man runs off saying “Aint no white man never did me no good like you, man.” All I can offer in response to this bit of racial stereotyping is a weak “yikes”.

In fairness, action films are not famed for their writing. It’s not like Die Hard went up for a Best Screenplay award. People love that movie for the fun action, gunplay, and Alan Rickman. Well, since this film doesn’t have Alan Rickman, it’s going to need to compensate. Once again, it fails to deliver. The CGI is quite literally laughable, and potentially the worst I’ve seen since Virus Shark. Some of the guns still have airsoft orange tips on the barrels, and none of the actors seem to know where to point them. As Bruce Willis creeps towards senility, his credibility as an action star continues to decline – although not as rapidly as his judgment about which movies he’ll agree to be in.

Put gently, this movie is a disaster. More accurately, it’s 105 minutes of unhinged, disjointed, poorly written, and shakily shot nonsense packed to bursting with unconvincing actors, one-dimensional characters, and rubbery effects. It would be illegal to show this to prisoners, because it would certainly count as cruel and unusual punishment. And they have the audacity to ask you to pay to watch this. Once again, yikes.