Riot begins with Jack Stone (Matthew Reese) arriving in prison. We soon learn that he was once a police officer, but he was sent to prison for his part in a daring bank robbery. But it turns out that his imprisonment is part of a greater scheme. The prison is home to Balam (Chuck Liddell), a Russian crime boss who does all his business in an opulent, heavily protected cell hidden within the facility. Stone has orchestrated his captured in order to gain access to Balam and get revenge for wrongs committed by the criminal.
We find out the truth about Jack Stone and his intentions by following a reporter on the outside. Stone basically left her some clues, and set her off to look for evidence of a bigger conspiracy protecting Balam. This secondary plot is pretty tedious. The reporter is basically catching up with what the audience can already infer. This side of the movie is deadly boring, and ends up in one of those poorly written scenarios where the bad guys seem weirdly hesitant to just kill someone who could do them a lot of harm.
The good guys aren't all that smart, either. Stone putting his ultimate fate in the hands of this reporter is a shaky proposition at best. And then he doesn't just outright tell her what she's supposed to be looking for. This is a problem in general with many of the movie's elements. Characters just seem to be so reluctant to offer vital information to people that need it. And in so doing, they sometimes put innocent people in danger. This is kind of irresponsible behavior on the part of heroes that tends to be a result of a plot heavily reliant on unnatural contrivance.
Things are relatively sedate in this movie until the final twenty minutes or so. The film spends most of its runtime keeping hero and villain apart. It gets to a point where it feels like they may as well be in completely different locations. But things do pick up in the third act. That's when things get a little crazy, and the characters are actually allowed to just beat some narrative progression into each other. This part of the film is kind of entertaining. The shooting of the action is competent, if not entirely proficient. At the very least, the film is given some much-needed energy in the final stretch.
It comes too late, but it's better late than never. The film finally displays a measure of style as it captures the chaos of the titular development. It feels like the film was saving majority of its budget for these last few sequences. Even in these portions, however, the acting never becomes adequate. Matthew Reese is a generic block of white cheese. Dolph Lundgren has some fun mumbling his way through his role, but it's hardly the best use for him. Chuck Liddell puts on an affected Russian accent that just feels like a poor choice.
Riot pretty much dies every time it cuts away from the prison. The stuff inside the prison isn’t great either, but compared to the travails of this one reporter operating on too little information, it is relatively exciting. The film’s premise actually has some potentially, but the execution is lacking. It often feels like the movie just isn’t moving forward, like the characters are off doing things that don’t really contribute to their cause. Tedium has set in well before things actually kick off.
My Rating:
