Horsemen

Director: Jonas Akerlund (2009)
Starring: Dennis Quaid, Ziyi Zhang, Lou Taylor Pucci
Find it online: IMDB, Amazon

There's a reason Se7en stars Kevin Spacey as the killer and not a bunch of teenagers. One, because Kevin Spacey can act and (most) teenager's can't. And two, because whingeing teenagers fucking suck. Horsemen fucking sucks, despite the best efforts of Dennis Quaid and a character called 'Stingray'. It's a stupid movie, from its Se7en-lite aesthetics to its predictable and banal use of torture. There's not a convincing or scary villain in the whole movie and it builds to a dull, highly forseeable 'climax' which is in no way apocalyptic, scary, thrilling or even interesting. Dennis Quaid looks tired and the movie's attempt at creating a teenage female Hannibal Lecter (Ziyi Zhang) is laughable. Or it would be if it wasn't so depressingly ridiculous.

It's the sort of cliched cop movie that stars professional 'that guy' Barry Shabaka Henley as a cop boss and wastes Peter Stormare as its signposted red herring. As soon as you see Quaid's hunched, depressed looking cop you can tell that he's probably suffering a dead wife (which he is) and struggling to bring up kids that hate him (he does and they do). As the thing stumbles on and on, its outcome becomes more and more predictable, more inconsequential and more stupid. It's an impressive 'thriller' that makes its villains less scary as the movie goes on. Actually, no, Horsemen is not an impressive thriller; not even in an ironic sense.

"Come and see", the movie's villains taunt, repeatedly. "Come and see." No, don't.