Once Upon A Time In Venice: Blu-ray Review

Venice Beach P.I. Steve Ford (Bruce Willis) is a detective who’s good with the ladies, bad with the punches, and wild about his dog, Buddy. But when his beloved pet is stolen by local thugs, Steve makes a questionable alliance with their devious leader, Spyder (Jason Momoa). Teaming up with his best friend (John Goodman), Steve pulls out the big guns in search of Spyder’s stolen cocaine and cash in order to set things straight and get Buddy back where he belongs.

In recent years I’ve been kind of weary about watching Bruce Willis films. They haven’t particularly been the best and for the most part it felt like he was just “phoning it in”. This film however felt like he got back on the saddle and was ready for another run. Comedy is more or less where Willis started from (anyone remember Moonlighting?) and I really think that at this point in his career that’s where he should start shooting for because I thought that he was fantastic in this film. He has this seriousness to him that when mixed with comedic situations makes his reactions even more hilarious. The plot is a lot like the a typical action movie along the lines of John Wick: They took something from me so I will get revenge. In this case however it’s not as serious and although it is a simple premise, Willis blends action and comedy extremely well to the point that it makes this film a really fun watch. The one bad thing however is the performance of Momoa. In the film he plays a Latino gang leader but the thing with that is that he does it in the most stereotypical way possible. To top it off he’s not even Latino at all, he’s from Hawaii. I’m positive that there was no bad intentions there but he just wasn’t convincing as the character. Besides that I thought that the movie was a fun adventure and the cast provided some eclectic characters to keep me entertained the entire way through. 7/10

Behind The Scenes – The usual “Making Of” feature that includes clips from the film and interviews with the cast and crew.