2021's Deadlock is Die Hard in a Dam, with a Surprisingly Engaged Bruce Willis as the Villain and Patrick Muldoon as the Underwhelming Hero
Considering the choices that Willis has made over the past decade, it can be hard to believe that Willis has said no to anything, no matter how grubby or distasteful. Yet he notoriously wanted four million dollars for four days work to appear in The Expendables 3, so he was replaced by Harrison Ford, who has a reputation as one of the all-time grumps but apparently is a pussycat to work with compared to Willis. A bargain as well!
And Willis apparently turned down Die Hart because he he didn’t understand Quibi and thought it sounded stupid. That was a wise decision in that Quibi was a disaster of historic proportions and a mistake in that Die Hart turned out to be a wry, post-modern delight that scored a much deserved Emmy nomination for the actor that took the role instead—John Travolta—as well as his costars Kevin Hart and Nathalie Emmanuel, and was picked up for a second season.
The premise of Die Hart is that an insecure Kevin Hart, playing a fictionalized version of himself, signs up for a secret action hero acting school run by charismatic lunatic Ron Wilcox (John Travolta). The comedy’s title certainly would have made more sense with Willis in the Ron Wilcox role and I’m sure Willis would have given his best, funniest and loosest performance in ages, as Willis’ Look Who’s Talking and Pulp Fiction costar Travolta did in the juicy role of a half-mad guru of all things action.
There would have been an additional meta-textual element to Willis in the role since, as I’ve commented earlier in the series, Willis’ 2021 output feels unmistakably like the result of a Bruce Willis Action Fantasy Camp that affords various C-listers and never-weres the opportunity to be a genuine action hero in a real Bruce Willis movie.
Then again it would be more accurate to say that Willis’ costars in these movies are “action heroes” rather than the real deal, in that they’re “action heroes” in the same way the wrestler who stars in The Marine 13: Bloodshed in Cities With Generous Tax Incentives for Film Productions is an action hero. And Willis’ late-period output technically qualify as motion pictures but it’d be overly generous to call them real films rather than disposable product.
Patrick Muldoon, who you might know from such films as My Adventures with Santa, Magic in Mount Holly, Bernie the Dolphin, Bernie the Dolphin 2, Saving Christmas, A Boyfriend for Christmas, A Dogwalker’s Christmas Tale, Robo-Dog, The Dog Who Saved Summer, Miracle Dogs Too and of course The Dog That Saved Easter gets his turn at Bruce Willis Action Hero Fantasy Camp and the results are a pleasant surprise for reasons that have nothing to do with Muldoon.
Patrick Muldoon has some experience being a badass action hero.
With Deadlock, Willis finally figured out that the way to stop being upstaged by the more charismatic actor playing the insane bad guy is to be the more charismatic actor playing the deranged villain.
After limply playing low-energy, low-impact heroes in Midnight in the Switchgrass, Apex, Fortress, Out of Death and Survive the Game Willis makes a striking heel turn here and plays a grief-stricken father out for vengeance in Deadlock. The change suits him.
At the risk of giving the faintest of praise, Deadlock features far and away Willis’ best and most committed performance of 2021. He seems liberated by playing a bad guy motivated by deep pain and a grudge against a cruel universe rather than another interchangeable good guy with a badge.
Willis is so typecast as a wisecracking hero that it’s jarring seeing him play Ron Whitlock, someone with no regard for human life and a murderous beef with humanity, the police and the dam industry.
The welcome surprises begin with Willis responding to a pair of cops showing up at his front door with unwelcome news by shooting them in the face. It’s an attention-grabbing way to establish that Willis will be playing someone very different from the cop he plays in pretty much all of his other movies.
Deadlock essentially remakes Die Hard with Patrick Muldoon in the Bruce Willis role, Willis in the Alan Rickman part and a dam in Georgia standing in for the Nakatomi Plaza in Los Angeles.
Die Hard knock-offs are so ubiquitous that they’re pretty much a sub-genre onto themselves. For decades “Die Hard on a _____” has been a popular and dependable formula. So it makes sense that Willis would return to this world late in his career.
As Die Hard knockoffs go, Deadlock is not particularly distinguished. Muldoon makes for an almost impressively unimpressive hero but Willis’ out of character turn as a killer elevates it to the level of watchable mediocrity.
In an action hero turn you might expect from the star of such films as A Dogwalker’s Christmas Tale, Robo-Dog, The Dog Who Saved Summer, Miracle Dogs Too and of course The Dog That Saved Easter, Muldoon plays the amusingly, masculinely named Mack Carr, a good old boy from the South who saw the world as an Army Ranger, then retired to a quiet life as a welder at a dam.
Mack begins the film in his trailer with a pounding hangover after an evening of drunken debauchery with his buddies and coworkers.
Deadlock wants to establish its protagonist as a John McClane-like everyman who stumbles backwards into heroism but goes too far and makes him a bit of a goober, a Southern-fried idiot who doesn’t seem to know much, except for how to single-handedly defeat a team of heavily armed terrorists and save countless lives.
In his first scene, Mack talks to his dog in a way that makes it seem like the dog is his best and only friend and also his intellectual superior. If the film had played the idea of a dumb hick morphing into a super-soldier with ninja-like reflexes for laughs it might have been amusing but it’s instead played weirdly straight, to the point that Mack’s defining features are that he’s a bit of a silly hillbilly but also an unstoppable killing machine.
Ron Whitlock decides to get revenge on the police officers who killed his son in what can only be described as a very big “Whoopsie” by taking over a dam and taking its employees hostage, as well as an assortment of children.
A number of dam employees are in cahoots with the terrorists, which is going to make things very awkward at the next office Christmas party. Isn’t that always the way? At every office there are people who would happily join forces with bloodthirsty terrorists, people who would be terrified hostages and, if you’re very lucky, someone ex-military to kill all the bad guys.
Muldoon’s goober is sleeping off his wicked hangover when the bad guys storm the dam. He wakes up to discover his coworkers, bosses and comic relief security guard sidekick all in desperate need of his special skills.
The action in Deadlock is nothing special but it is compelling watching Willis terrorize a pregnant woman and shoot lots of people in the face.
While Muldoon proves that he’s no Bruce Willis, Willis illustrates that when he’s trying, he can be a very good actor even if the material isn’t great, or even particularly good.
I wouldn’t go so far as to call Deadlock good but it is one of the least terrible movies I’ve seen for this project and features Willis’ best and most committed performance. By the very low standards of Willis’ 2021 output, Deadlock is undeniably a cut above, the best of a very bad lot.
Three and a Half Brunos on a One to Five Scale
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