You've seen this movie before: a good guy thief squares off against a bad guy thief over a the biggest score of their careers. There is nothing offensively bad about the Precious Cargo trailer – it just looks like a hopelessly generic action film that probably would have starred Michael Dudikoff in another time and place. After all, the star of gigantic hits like The Sixth Sense and Armageddon is credited beneath Mark-Paul Gosselaar, who has apparently decided to try out this whole action hero thing. Willis plays the villain in Precious Cargo and if the trailer is any indication, it's another quick, in-and-out gig in a project that otherwise looks like it somehow escaped the DTV realm. Those last two titles don't ring a bell? Exactly. His tremendous performance in Rian Johnson's Looper goes a long way to helping cancel out those past few Die Hard sequels, although it's a bit harder to forgive his phoned-in paycheck jobs in movies like Vice and Fire With Fire. Altogether, other than the opening scene a very bad film.It's tough to pinpoint exactly when Bruce Willis stopped giving a s***, mainly because he's still capable of great work. Do not expect every character in every film to be likeable when characters in numerous films purposefully aren't, but it is an issue if there are characters meant to be rootable and 'Precious Cargo' has that problem. The characters are not compelling or easy to get behind, too sketchily written and with character behaviours and traits that frustrate. What there is of the action is clumsily choreographed and routine at best, too reliant on convenience too and with not much exciting or tense. 'Precious Cargo' goes overboard on the ridiculousness and lack of plausibility and at other points it takes itself too seriously. Dialogue from the very start to the predictable climax is riddled with clichés and cheese, with toe-curling howlers aplenty, and what little there is of the story has no surprises, fun or tension, is very pedestrian in pace and fails to make sense or have signs of maturity. The direction is suggestive of inexperience, there is just no energy, momentum or finesse, the non-action oriented parts are handled so indifferently and the action is shot in a way that can be difficult to follow. The music is too loud, should have been used far less and some of the placement is inappropriate. Visually, the film does lack cohesion, is pretty sloppy in camera work and editing and the colour scheme is so unappealingly murky.
The worst performance comes from Jenna B Kelly, whose performance is an awful mess of being obnoxious and generating little personality.
However, for someone highly billed, Willis is used poorly (again, am seeing a pattern here), he looks tired and like he didn't want to be there. Not much redeemable here, with the best thing being the promising opening scene before the film quickly goes down south in quality and not only doesn't ever recover but it gets worse. Not hating it with pleasure, it's my honest opinion and my negative feelings towards it are regrettable. It fails in the action and thrills stakes, faring very unfavourably in relation to other films seen in the genre, lots of silliness and endless predictability. 'Precious Cargo' is a better film to that while having similar, actually even the same, faults. 'Precious Cargo' is yet another not good representation of him, if not as bad as 'Vice' and especially 'Reprisal'. Expectations were not high though, because Willis has been past prime for a while (several bad films and has looked tired and disengaged a lot) and has been in a lot of stinkers lately. The title and poster also intrigued and similarly the idea for the story sounded sort of interesting, despite a lack of originality. Saw 'Precious Cargo' because Bruce Willis has done good films and given good performances in the past, 'Die Hard' is a genre landmark and his performance is iconic in that.