Blackout Parent Guide

A man (Josh Duhamel) wakes up in a hospital bed with no idea of who or where he is. As he struggles to regain his memory, he finds himself being chased by members of a drug cartel for reasons he can’t remember. Desperate to figure out what’s going on and not sure who to trust, he realizes that he’ll have to fight his way out.

Imagine you showed a 12-year-old boy John Wick and The Bourne Identity back-to-back and then asked him to write a movie script. You would probably wind up with the screenplay for Blackout. This is a pathetically derivative slog of film. The story, the characters, even the sets are all reminiscent of better productions. Even the score feels like a rip off of some of Hans Zimmer’s work. You want a plot? There is no plot. You want character development? There is no character development. The entire movie is just a fight scene followed by Josh Duhamel saying, “I don’t remember anything” and then another fight scene. There is no rhyme or reason to anything that happens; yet somehow, I predicted all of it.

I can excuse an action movie with little plot if the action scenes are interesting and well done. These are not. There is constant shaky-cam, weird editing, and even more bizarre cinematography. The dialogue is just as clunky as the editing. Maybe this is just a me problem, but I was very distracted by a really bad wig worn by one of the characters. I could see the edges and it looked extremely unnatural. Yes, that seems like a small complaint but honestly laughing at that wig was the only enjoyable part of this experience.

Based on the subject matter I’m sure you’ve already guessed that I can’t recommend this film for family viewing. There are high levels of violence and swearing plus a completely random and pointless scene where a bunch of women walk around completely naked. But even if there was no negative content at all I still wouldn’t recommend this movie. It doesn’t even have the decency to be fun. It’s just boring and derivative with no meaning to be found.