A barely-seen Bruce Willis heads up this lifeless action sequel set in a remote forest compound.
In the wake of Bruce Willis’s recent diagnosis of aphasia, it’s worrying to note that he has no fewer than seven movies still waiting to be released. We can only pray that one of them is a more worthy swan song than Josh Sternfeld’s execrable “Fortress: Sniper’s Eye,” a sequel so dumb that no effort by Willis could reasonably be expected to save it.
Not that he’s onscreen long enough for us to judge, given that his character, a battle-hardened former C.I.A. agent named Robert, spends most of the movie conveniently confined to a hospital bed nursing a gunshot wound. Roughly a month after the murder-y assault detailed in last year’s “Fortress” (the name of a nebulous forest retreat with a high-tech command bunker), we find the survivors reassessing their lives — and, one hopes for the actors who play them, resolving to make better career choices.
Before landing in that bed, Robert had journeyed to Russia to rescue the supposed widow of his nemesis, a gloating villain unaccountably played by Chad Michael Murray. Elsewhere, Robert’s cyber-savvy son (Jesse Metcalfe) is making eyes at Kate (Kelly Greyson), the impressively ripped director of the facility whose habitual crop-top-and-shorts ensemble — as we learn when the inevitable second assault kicks off — also comes in commando olive.
Plot-wise, Alan Horsnail’s screenplay is as dull as the cinematography and as awkward as the performances. It does, however, make swiping money from a U.S. Treasury website look so easy we should probably all be doing it.
Fortress: Sniper’s Eye
Rated R for ropy action and risible acting. Running time: 1 hour 27 minutes. In theaters and available to rent or buy on Apple TV, Google Play and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators.
Source: Movies - nytimes.com
