"Marauders" Review

When I saw the first trailer for Marauders, I had nearly forgotten that the project existed. Living in Cincinnati, you hear about big stars like Bruce Willis and Law & Order's Christopher Meloni coming to town to shoot a new film. I remember hearing they were around but little about what their movie was. Then a couple of months ago the trailer debuted, showing a taste of the finished product. There were several money shots of the downtown skyline - the kind that firmly established the film as a Cincinnati story. There would be no mistaking this setting for New York or Los Angeles. The rest of the trailer looked like fairly standard bank-heist-movie fare, but I was excited for a full-tilt action picture set in Cincinnati. Marauders turned out to be a day-and-date VOD release; you could find it on streaming services and cable OnDemand the same day I paid to see it in a small, locally-owned movie theater. This theater typically gets all the movies that are made in Cincinnati since it seems to be the preferred space for locals working on these projects. There's something inherently special about sitting among an audience full of folks who either acted as extras, served as a grip or worked catering for the film you're seeing on the big screen. This adds a wholly unique dimension to the moviegoing experience regardless of the quality of the finished product; thus it's inherently set apart from a lot of the other movies you'd normally go out to see.

Having said that, I wish I could've apologized to everyone else I saw Marauders with. It is so morose, so convoluted and so tragically awful that surely the talents of every single person involved - both in front of the camera and behind - would have been better served back at their day jobs.

I'll attempt to divulge a general synopsis here, but the story is so far up its own ass that I'll likely miss something - Jeffrey Hubert (Willis) is the head of a multinational bank headquartered in the Queen City. Several of his local branches are robbed by highly-trained professionals. With the local police dragging their feet, the feds are called in to investigate. Agent Jonathan Montgomery (Meloni) leads the charge with Agents Stockwell (Dave Bautista) and Wells (Entourage's Adrian Grenier) in tow. Volatile from his wife's violent murder, Montgomery throws himself headlong into the investigation, working tirelessly to find and stop the perpetrators. As events proceed, however, military and political conspiracies reveal themselves.

The film starts off promising enough with a well-executed robbery scene and some great shots of the city of Cincinnati. It only goes downhill from there. VOD "Ed Wood" Steven C. Miller (Extraction, Submerged) allows far too many blatant continuity errors to slip by his watch. Somehow that doesn't surprise me. In one scene, Montgomery has a conversation with one of the bank robbers over Skype. On at least three occasions, we see Montgomery standing there talking to either a blank screen or the desktop. In another scene (this will only really stand out to Cincinnatians) two characters say that they need to go to West Chester to meet with a witness. Cut to the guys in a car riding through Covington, Kentucky on their way to meet that witness. For those of you who aren't familiar with Cincinnati, West Chester is about 30 minutes north of Covington. In a less self-serious film, these errors might be met with laughter of the "so-bad-it's-good" variety," but Marauders woefully lacks any sense of fun whatsoever. It's so bleak that the city of Cincinnati is portrayed in a constant state of thundershowers. We actually have sunshine here in real life. This isn't Seattle.

Without tongue-in-cheek sensibilities, nearly all of the drama falls flat. The characters we're supposed to empathize with - like Montgomery and police lieutenant Mims (Johnathon Schaech), whose wife is dying of cancer - are rendered inert as a result.

Two things kept me from completely tuning out of this movie - the setting and the performances. Even though Miller recycles one too many shots of the city, it's still cool to see a Cincy-set action picture on principle alone. I also thought Meloni, Bautista, and Grenier acted well even though Meloni's pretty much been playing this role for years on television. The movie itself doesn't feel too far off from last week's Law & Order reruns. Willis is sadly a caricature of himself these days as he's starting to slip down the same paycheck-to-paycheck path of Nicolas Cage. Let's hope the rumored Die Hard recalibration and Eli Roth's Death Wish bring him back to form.

Marauders appeals only to those from the city of Cincinnati. Even then, that's a bit of a stretch. Literally no one else should bother.

D