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Cast

Ray Liotta
as Deputy Todd Shaw

Erin Karpluk
as Ellen

Tyron Leitso

Dominic Purcell
as Baron

Steve Bacic

Michael Paré
as Agent Benny Conklin

Critic Reviews for Suddenly

Audience Reviews for Suddenly

• Jul 19, 2015

  Remaking classic films is admirable. It is a great way to introduce a new generation to the classic stories of our culture, when it's done correctly. Suddenly is a remake of the 1954 Frank Sinatra film by the same name, starring Ray Liotta as Tod Shaw. Shaw is an aging, alcoholic cop in a small town, who is at the end of his career. One day, rather suddenly, the President makes a surprise stop in the town where he works. As they make the final preparations for the visit, Shaw comes to realize that a local family has been taken hostage, and the President is in danger. In remaking a film like this, producers should only consider going one of two ways. Either make it a true remake, set in 1954, or adapt the story to fit the times, Uwe Boll did neither. This remake is very much the same story, but takes place in 2013. This is problematic, as it makes the story somewhat unbelievable. There are better ways of doing things, modern technology, many different things the story could have and should have changed, but it didn't. As for Ray Liotta, he's probably the last person I would cast to reprise Frank Sinatra. When Sinatra made this film, he was 39 years old, Liotta is 58 years old, and he more than acts his age. Are we really supposed to believe that at nearly 60 years old, Liotta can even attempt to take on a beast like Dominic Purcell? The whole thing was just way off target, but I am giving it 2 1/2 stars, because of Purcell. This guy just gets better with every performance, weather it's the lovably naive escaped con or the scary cold assassin, Purcell is always believable and fun to watch. Suddenly was never that great of a story to begin with, but for some reason Uwe Boll had a connection to it, and decided to remake it, but the way it is done makes it almost comical and anything but a fitting tribute to the work of Frank Sinatra.
  Todd S Super Reviewer
• Jun 03, 2014

  I can genuinely say that director Uwe Boll pleasantly surprised me with the last film I watched that had his imprint, Attack on Wall Street. It almost worked. It felt like Boll had maybe gotten over the hump of mediocrity, and sub-sub-mediocrity, that has become synonymous with his career writing and directing movies. Then one day, Suddenly suddenly popped up on Netflix, available for consumption, and 90 very tepid minutes later, my renewed hopes for a turnaround had been dashed and trashed once more. The President of the United States of America is stopping by the sleepy mountain town of Suddenly. The secret service is canvassing the neighborhood to secure locations. Officer Todd Shaw (Ray Liotta) is working off another bender and may just get suspended. Ellen (Erin Karpluk) and her teenage son Pidge (Cole Corker) are living up on the mountain with a great view of the town. Agents Baron (Dominic Purcell), Conklin (Michael Pare), and Wheeler (Tyron Leitso, though he's referred to as "Agent Young" several times) come knocking on her door to inspect. Except they aren't real secret service agents. They're posing to coordinate an assassination on the president, a hit ordered by the "Committee" that they work for. The assassins in suits lock Ellen, her son, and her elderly father (Don MacKay) in the basement, and wait for the president to arrive. There's just the problem of keeping their cover and making sure Todd doesn't intervene. Oh, and the town has a shop that advertises "fetish" in its name. So there's that. Given the assassination premise, Suddenly is shocking in just how overwhelmingly boring it is. There's a noticeable lack of urgency in just about every scene despite the stakes of men with guns threatening people's lives. A solid majority of the movie is an almost comically low-key hostage situation where we watch Ellen's family bumble around the basement as captives and try to outsmart the relatively dimwitted assassins. It's nothing quite along the lines of, say, Home Alone, but it feels comically off in tone, aided by an inappropriate musical score. These people don't ever feel scared or panicked, and their conversations show it. The stupid grandfather character in this feels like he was plucked from a different, more broadly comical movie. Oh look, he's fussing about with things; oh look, now he's going to tell one of his old stories. In the context of a hostage thriller, it doesn't work. Grandpa half-heartedly relates a tale about being snowed in with grandma where, surprise, they got out (the man is standing there after all). "See, it all works out in the end," he reasons with no convincing evidence. And then (spoilers) he dies in the most idiotic way possible. During a light scuffle, he gets shoved and falls over. "He has a heart condition," Ellen screams, informing us for the first time of this malady. I'm thinking he's faking, so as to strike when the attacker draws near. Nope, he just lies there and dies in the most pathetic way possible, as if the plot had just decided it didn't need him after all. One of the armed men actually tries to revive him, how nice. Suddenly literally takes its sweet time getting to that presidential moment, saving that for the last few minutes of the film. Almost all of Raul Inglis' (The Killing Machine) screenplay revolves around one scenario: will the bad guys' cover be blown as different people keep finding their way back to Ellen's secluded home. Oh no, the deputy will spoil things! Oh wait, he's easily fooled. Well thank goodness that problem was solved in a not interesting manner. This takes up an hour of the movie, and it's rather repetitious without any escalation. The entire setup feels like a series of lame stalling techniques to save the good stuff for the very end, rather than dealing with reversals and rising action. Then there's the nature of the ending, which is so abrupt and without a single trace of resolution. As soon as that shot's fired, the film ends a minute later. We learn via the news that the gunman shot himself... in the chest? At a distance? None of this holds together and the ending does not justify the time it took, and wasted, to get to that point. There is exactly one point where this movie flashes the kind of quality story it could have been and it happens 70 minutes into the picture. Baron miraculously deduces how Ellen's husband was killed: friendly fire, and Todd was the culprit. It was naturally an accident, one that haunted Todd deeply, but he returned home and everyone started throwing around the word "hero." So he kept the truth to himself. Now, right there is an interesting premise that could produce a flurry of intriguing and complicated drama. Todd would live his day feeling like a fraud but also not wanting to disappoint his loved ones, the people he cares about, and so hiding the truth could be a justifiable evil, or could it? This little reveal of character backstory is only intended to explain Todd's penchant for drinking, and the movie just skirts along a few minutes later, already over this revelation. Suddenly should have dropped all of the cheesy and half-baked thriller aspects and gone in this other direction. The villains in this movie lack conviction and competency. First of all, they just leave Ellen and her son and father unattended in the basement rather than tying them up. Then there's just their general unconvincing nature when speaking with locals. They pose as secret service agents but there are actual secret service agents still in their midst. These turncoats are plotting to murder the president because the "Committee" they work for has demanded such. This phantom "Committee" is only known through one agent, Baron, and each man is selected for duty. They have a cause, though none of them can articulate exactly what that would be. At one point Conklin insists not killing the hostages because it would be bad PR and dissuade the public to the merits of their unexplained cause. Are these guys thick enough to think that killing the United States president will win over the public, just as long as they have good reasons for killing the president? It seemed obvious that Baron was going to be the lone person of this "Committee," and yet the film doesn't even tie up this loose end. We never know whether Baron was making it all up or whether there is a clandestine organization that has its sights set on the president. Boll's diffident direction mirrors the lack of enthusiasm throughout the production. This just doesn't come across as a story that separates itself from your bargain basement, straight-to-DVD action flick. In fact there isn't any action in the movie short of a few tidy scenes. And as far as thrills and suspense, they're undercut at just about every turn, thanks to the lack of urgency and the comical misuses of Ellen and her family. At no point will you be watching Suddenly and get the sensation that anybody really cared about making this movie as best it could be. Usually Boll's movies feel pasted together and derivative of other, better movies and visual influences; this movie is too dull to even be derivative. The movie even has the temerity to reuse that trite cliché, having the villain remark, "Under other circumstances you and I could have been friends." The dumb villains, the dumb characters, the lackluster pacing and suspense, the lack of resolution, it all contributes to making what is easily the most boring movie in Boll's filmography. Usually these kinds of thrillers are churned out into the straight-to-DVD market, a glut of recycled plots and tortured/reluctant action heroes. There's a formula that works and there's been a proven audience that enjoys something cheesy, thoughtless, and familiar. And that's what puzzles me even more about Suddenly because every somnambulant second of the film leaves you with the stark impression that nobody cared. The tale of a hostage thriller mixed with a presidential assassination, with some war drama thrown in, could work as far as the genre goes. All you need is a solid premise and some gung-ho execution, which explains why we had two Die-Hard-in-a-White-House films last year. Suddenly is nothing special, which we all suspected from the particulars involved, but it's not even worthwhile or workable genre pap, which is even more insulting. From the wacky grandfather to the idiot villains who blindly trust their leader to the abrupt ending, or how about the fact that a kid is named Pidge, this is just one bad movie. Nate's Grade: D
  Nate Z Super Reviewer

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