Action Films Need A Strong Dose Of Reality

Thanksgiving weekend this year was not a good one for action-thriller movies.

The two movies I refer to - “Money Train” and “Nick of Time” - both had fairly promising ideas behind them, but ended up in the ranks of dozens of movies with similar story lines.

Let’s start with “Money Train.” The movie was hyped as a comedy-action film, but it simply tried to do too much.

As with any Hollywood production, a love interest had to be introduced for the two main characters (Wesley Snipes and Woody Harrelson) to fight over. But since the director was already concerned with following through on the comedy and action aspects of the film, the romantic part made “Money Train” too busy.

The plot, or at least the version we saw in the previews, was intriguing. A couple of subway cops decide to rob the “money train,” the New York subway car that collects and distributes money to and from each of the subway stations.

Even the start of this movie had promise, when we see Harrelson’s character act as a homeless drunk so an unsuspecting pickpocket or petty thief would get an unwanted surprise from the other cops covering the scene.

Unfortunately, we get to see this scene, in various forms, twice more and it has absolutely no effect on the outcome of the movie.

What “Money Train” desperately needed was a dose of reality. Its director tried to cram three hours worth of movie into two, and ended up with what felt like four stories, none of which were well developed, very funny or resolved.

“Nick of Time,” in a nutshell, was totally hopeless.

Here’s the plot: Johnny Depp gets off a train with his young daughter when two diabolical characters give him an ultimatum. He must kill the governor of California in 90 minutes or they kill his daughter.

My question is, how many times can Hollywood take a normal guy, put his loved one in danger, throw in a couple of characters that seem like Boris from “Rocky and Bullwinkle” and call it a movie? Much less, expect the viewing public to enjoy it?

As I see it, this tired plot’s days are numbered.

The movie is shown in “real time,” meaning that as time ticks by on Depp’s watch, it ticks by on your watch. Because of this, “Nick of Time” is totally obsessed with clocks. It seems like a quarter of the movie is spent with a camera focused on some clock.

Over the course of the movie, Depp comes up with a half dozen schemes to get himself out of the jam, but he finds that everyone, including the governor’s husband, is in on the conspiracy.

The worst part of “Nick of Time” is that Christopher Walken, one of the villains, keeps tapping Depp on the shoulder, as if to remind him what he’s supposed to do, and then points to his watch. Walken seems to be everywhere Depp turns, in a way that makes his character entirely unbelievable.

This is also a problem with “Money Train.” The villain in that movie, the subway director, is so diabolically cartoonish that there is no way such a person exists, especially in that sort of position.

Both movies are hopeless and not that much fun to watch. For an alternative, try Pierce Brosnan’s “Goldeneye,” a movie that doesn’t take itself too seriously and manages to provide a suspenseful and enjoyable story without basing it around an endangered loved one.

“Money Train”: C-

“Nick of Time”: D-