Review: Bruce Willis goes out with a whimper with 'Wire Room'
Posted Tuesday, October 11, 2022 at 4:46 PM Central
by John Couture
Every December, I pull out my collection of Die Hard films and fall in love all over again with Bruce Willis. Whether you believe that Die Hard is a Christmas movie or not (it totally is), there's no denying that these movies helped to cement Bruce Willis as an action hero.
It's a legend that he's been living up to for the last 35 years and for my money, there was no one better at it during his time. Unfortunately with his recent reveal of an aphasia diagnosis, his acting career has come to an abrupt end.
Save for the seemingly endless supply of really cheesy B-movies in the can, his career will forever be heralded as a success with very few bumps along the way. Sadly, his last few movies don't rise up to the cinematic glories of a Pulp Fiction or Unbreakable.
No, instead, the completists out there are left having to celebrate the end of Bruce's dynamic career with a bunch of films where he's relegated to nothing more than a glorified cameo and a paycheck.
Sadly, Wire Room fits the bill.
Action legend Bruce Willis comes out with guns blazing as Shane Mueller, a Homeland Security agent who runs the Wire Room, a high-tech command center surveilling the most dangerous criminals. New recruit Justin Rosa (Kevin Dillon, "Entourage") must monitor arms-smuggling cartel member Eddie Flynn — and keep him alive at all costs. When a SWAT team descends on Flynn's home, Rosa breaks protocol and contacts the gangster directly to save his life. As gunmen break into the Wire Room and chaos erupts, Mueller and Rosa make a final, desperate stand against the corrupt agents and officials who seek to destroy evidence and kill them both.
Kevin Dillon is the lead here with most of the action involving him in a room talking off-screen or on the phone to other people. I'm not sure if Kevin Dillon can act or if every director simply asks him to do a version of his Entourage character "Drama."
Or maybe the actor is just too typecast to that stereotype ala Matt LeBlanc and Joey Tribbiani. I guess we will never know as I doubt we'll ever see Kevin Dillon take on Shakespeare or some other deeply dramatic role. It's not like Dillon is bad here, but it's painfully obvious that he was given one note and he went with it: Drama is in over his head and bullets are flying.
As for the aforementioned Willis, his actual screen time amounts to maybe 10 minutes with some of that being scattered at the beginning in a weird in media res start that I'm convinced was tacked on to simply bolster the run time and to get in more Bruce Willis.
There are times over the course of the film where Willis is supposed to be off-screen while Dillon is moving the narrative, but it's painfully obvious that he wasn't on set that day. At the end of the day, Willis probably only shot three days tops, but still garnered top two billing and prominent placement on the artwork.
The biggest issue with Wire Room is that they spent very little time and money on the script and it shows. The concept is an interesting one, but they never quite sell the action and use the crutch of "bad cops" to explain away how easy it is to infiltrate a supposed hardened government facility.
In other words, lazy writing and basic acting combine to produce a ho-hum actioner with just enough bloodshed to keep your Dad's attention during a late-night viewing. Because let's face it, Wire Room is going to be one of those movies that you discover late at night while you're frantically switching channels looking for something to help you sleep.
It will aid in your desire for more Zzzzz's, but I suppose that's the ultimate rebuke for the movie. It will barely keep you awake as you await the obvious and boring ending.
It's a sad cherry on top of an otherwise stellar acting career. But it's apparent that Bruce's job choices over the last few years haven't been top-notch. These stragglers that are still awaiting release won't tarnish his whole career, but they will leave a bad taste in the mouth of an otherwise spectacular career.
Wire Room is now available on Blu-ray and DVD.
