Bruce Willis, for whatever reason, is determined to go the schlocky B movie route these days and has been cranking them out with stunning punctuality and frequency. Last year he did a “body snatchers in space” style one called Breach which I actually kind of enjoyed and now he has a new one called… “Cosmic Sin”, which sounds like a flavour of Axe Body Spray. Well… and I just know I’m going to catch major shit for this, but I didn’t hate this one either, as slipshod, incoherent and cheap as it is. Willis once again plays a legendary military leader who has fallen from grace. Once called “the blood general” for dropping a mega-bomb on an entire species to eradicate them before a war could break out, he’s been dragged out of his favourite bar (complete with robot bartenders, I must excitedly note) for One Last Mission: first contact with another aggressive alien species has been established and the leaders of what’s left of humanity want him to spearhead a deadly preemptive strike in order to avoid intergalactic war, an operation called ‘cosmic sin’ that should have been called ‘operation I’ll fucken do it again.’ It’s basically sanctioned genocide, and an odd idea for a story but I suppose it makes sense, if the species in question is hostile and nasty enough to warrant it. So he blasts off in a special quantum leap suit to the forest moon of Ellora with several others including his longtime sidekick (Corey Large, also responsible for writing and producing these things), a battle hardened veteran (Costas Mandylor and a surprisingly good British accent), a lab tech (Adelaide Kane) in charge of handling their ‘Q-Bomb,’ a hotheaded rookie (Brandon Thomas Lee, who is Pam Anderson & Tommy Lee’s kid), a foxy scientist (Perrey Reeves) who has vague romantic history with Willis and Frank Grillo as yet another military badass. The film consists of lots of murky pseudo-scientific and political expository dialogue, clunky gunfights in cheap looking mecha-suits, half mumbled lines from Willis, lots of running, shooting, neon lights, a pulsating video game type score and eventual aliens that look like regular people in Spirit Halloween costumes. I’m not gonna lie, the thing sucks hard, but if you’re a trash aficionado like me, it sucks in… just the right way (I realize after typing that how it sounds). It’s the kind of breezy junk food cinema you’d find playing at 2am on SyFy in the glorious early 2000’s in between reruns of Xena, and honestly sometimes I miss those days. I think the fact that it has Willis in it, and that people aren’t quite used to him in fare like this yet (you’ll come around, don’t worry. It happened to Pacino and DeNiro too lol) is why it’s being *especially* shredded and roasted in reviews. And yeah, its shitty, but it’s fun shitty, and I need those type of films on my menu just as much as all the rest. Oh and one more thing: I have to give this extra points for having maybe my favourite written line in any film of 2021. As one character tries to reassure another who has been shot and is bleeding out, he literally says “Don’t even think about dying, or I’ll fucking kill you.” *That*, my friends, is what cinema is all about.
-Nate Hill
Podcasting Them Softly 