Parents' Guide to Deadlock

This is yet another Die Hard knockoff -- with Willis in the villain role this time -- that does just about everything wrong, from strange motivations to poor use of space and an irksome music score. The script even copies an idea from Die Hard with a Vengeance: that the hero is doing all his fighting and saving the town while suffering from a crushing hangover. Unfortunately, rather than establishing the movie's space so that we know where everything is in relation to everything else, the movie has Mack running around pretty much at random, climbing up to catwalks, crawling down to sub-basements, and even running across an open field for some reason. We never know where he is or what exactly he's doing.

Conversely, Deadlock does explain what the villain's motivation is, and it's ... unexpected. He's holding hostages and threatening to drown the town because he wants to talk to the cops who were involved with the death of his son and the imprisonment of his other son, which seems like something that could have been accomplished through far less extreme means. And while Muldoon plays scruffy hero Mack with a blast of energy and a cheeky attitude, Willis' performance is far too static. He looks vaguely annoyed all the time and is mostly in an immobile sitting position. It all becomes a dull waiting game that's accompanied by a repetitive, obtrusive score as viewers hope that Mack will eventually find the right door and put a stop to all of this. It can't come soon enough.