A Los Angeles detective seeks out the ruthless gang that stole his dog. Steve Ford (Bruce Willis) is a down but not out L.A based Private Investigator whose professional and personal worlds collide after his loving pet Buddy is stolen by a notorious gang. A series of crazy circumstances find him doing the gang's bidding, while being chased by two vengeful Samoan brothers, a loan shark's goons, and a few other shady characters. They say a dog is a man's best friend, and Steve shows how far a man will go to be reunited with him. An action comedy about down but still kicking Steve Ford (Bruce Willis), the only private investigator in L.A.-s Venice Beach, who tries to get his life back in order and chases the guys who stole his dog. Also appearing: John Goodman, Jason Momoa, Thomas Middleditch, Famke Janssen, Emily Robinson, Adam Goldberg, Kal Penn, Wood Harris, Tyga, Thom Rivera and others. Have you ever watched a movie and said to yourself: hey, I should be making movies. I could certainly write better than this, so why not try? That's exactly what brothers Mark and Robb Cullen must have been thinking. They have a reason to feel confident too. Both have been active in TV for years – producing and writing for different series –, and the quality of writing in TV is decidedly higher than in blockbuster movies. The brothers have also written 2010's action comedy Cop Out" starring Bruce Willis and Tracy Morgan, directed by Kevin Smith – the only Kevin Smith movie he didn't write himself – so they had another good reason to believe that making movies is the next logical step. Not to mention legendary Willis agreeing to star in the new one, too. But nothing is easy just because talented people have made it look so. Venice" comes across not as exciting action comedy like the trailers might make you believe but rather a generic TV pilot which lasts for 97 minutes, although 30 would be enough. Sure, the Cullen brothers can write and direct, that's what they do for living, but they have no good ideas about what to do with those colourful characters and situations they have sucked out of the keyboard. Granted, there is some action and light humor, and something is always happening, but the result is just off. The movie has so little heart or character or world building that it's difficult to care about any of this. It certainly doesn't help that there's nothing interesting about the main character – it's just Willis doing his usual schtick. The only near-intriguing character is Jason Momoa's powerful but also heartful Latino gangster. You may remember him as Khal Drogo from the first season of Game of Thrones", and he's the new superhero Aquaman. Willis has appeared in lots of mediocre or downright crappy movies during his career spanning nearly 40 years now, so Venice's" failure doesn't hurt him in any way, it's just business as usual. His performance doesn't seem tired, but it's far from exciting either. Some of his misadventures may look kind of interesting in trailers, but seem weak in the actual movie – yes, I am talking about the long skateboarding part in the beginning. Willis has probably lost followers during his "Nicolas Cage phase" (appearing in lots of straight-to-video-quality stuff in 2010's), but there are always some who can't get enough of his trademark bald-head and smirk. If you really like colorful crime" comedies, "Venice" has something for you too. Everybody else, just beware. The best thing about Venice" is that everybody involved at least tried to make something good. So it's gonna be OK as a part of late night Netflixing or something. But there are surely better entertainment in cinemas at any given time of the year, including right now. I want to like "Once Upon a Time in Venice" much more than I do. It's enough like "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang," a movie I enjoyed enough to watch several times, to hint at what it could have been with a better script and better direction. The "Once Upon a Time " title evokes associations with "Once Upon a Time in America," "Once Upon a Time in the West," "Once Upon a Time in Mexico" and a few similarly titled movies to suggest lofty aspirations. It has a talented cast. Jessica Gomes looks fantastic. And yet, the movie never seems to get out of first gear. <br/><br/>It begins with a voice-over by Middleditch's character asserting that there is only one private investigation agency in all of Venice, California, which seems a bit odd. A later Google search reveals several detective agencies with offices in Venice and others in Los Angeles and elsewhere that operate in Venice, so one wonders why they would base the movie on such tenuous foundation. The narrator continues to periodically tell the audience things that the character probably wouldn't know. <br/><br/>At another point in the script, a character has an encounter with a former love interest but allows former sentiments to interfere with more immediate objectives. While the actor manages to convey the inner conflict as well as possible, given the lines given in the script, the audience isn't given enough information to take sides or to sympathize. The scene really doesn't advance the plot, although it helps to explain why the character later does some things most people would be reluctant to do. <br/><br/>The plot has a few twists with characters making unexpected choices. The protagonist is there when things happen. But rather than driving the plot, he more often gets beaten up and knocked out, then regains consciousness to find that people have changed their minds and now want something else, which somehow makes his job easier. <br/><br/>Rather than Byzantine, the plot seems disjointed, with events happening in an unexpected sequence, but not really caused by earlier events.<br/><br/>On the other hand, Gomes looks great and every time she's on screen, something happens to at least patch over the holes in the plot. <br/><br/>Writer/director Mark Cullen and co-writer Robb Cullen seem to have a lot of experience in television, but this seems to be Mark's directorial debut. He deserves kudos for assembling a talented cast and for actually producing a film that is refreshingly free of the distracting jiggly-cam shots that spoil so many low-budget productions. But the script feels like a first draft in need of development. The jokes are what Vorhaus calls jokoids – nascent efforts at humor in need of refinement. With a little more effort, the film could have been exponentially better. The messy tangle of the plot, which involves Steve-Bruce getting knocked out, more than once, does little more than throw a whole lot of potentially silly stuff against the screen — some of it landing laughs.
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