‘This is Georgia,” drawls a character near the start of this tiresome, oddly dull action thriller. “Everyone’s doing something they’re not supposed to be doing.” But the problem with Bruce Willis in the movie is that he’s not doing something that he is supposed to be doing: acting. He puts in a such a wooden performance playing a washed-up, burnt-out cop that I could have screamed in frustration.
American Siege is set 10 years after the mysterious disappearance in a backwater town of teenager Brigit Baker (played in flashback by Sarah May Sommers). Brigit’s boyfriend Roy (Rob Gough) has spent the past decade in prison; now he wants the truth. Armed to the teeth, he storms the house of a local pharmacist, accompanied by Brigit’s sister Grace and her cousin Toby. This pair don’t do much for Hicksville stereotypes: Grace (Anna Hindman) is a gun-toting redneck in a white vest, Georgia’s answer to Sarah Connor; Toby (Johann Urb) is Bible-thumping and paranoid. The trio believes that the pharmacist (Cullen G Chambers) knows what happened to Brigit – and judging from the bank-grade security door on his basement, he’s up to something shady.
Enter Willis as Sheriff Ben Watts, who doubles as the town drunk. Willis gets the lines out, but there are scenes here where his acting is so lethargic you’d think director Edward Drake might have called cut to check for for a pulse. Watts is lazy, corrupt and on the payroll of powerful local businessman Charles Rutledge (Timothy V Murphy, giving good icy menace). Rutledge seems to be connected with the central mystery too. And to be fair, the script gives us a missing-girl storyline with an interesting (though not entirely thought out) twist. But the movie ends with a long boring standoff outside the pharmacist’s house, Roy and his gang up against a private militia led by a guy who looks like a buff Steve Bannon.
• American Siege is released on 10 January on digital platforms.
