Lack of good storyline.

It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

n my opinion it was a great movie with some interesting elements, even though having some plot holes and the ending probably was just too messy and crammed together, but still fun to watch and not your casual movie that is similar to all other ones.

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

This C-level action movie is overly ambitious, overly complicated and almost interesting. There are moments when it seems to be going beyond well worn clichés, but then you realize that's due to bad casting and poor writing. Ignition is fast paced, has a decent amount of action and throws in just enough gratuitous nudity and profanity to get an R rating. It's better than most low-budget flicks of this type, but features a lead actress who is not at all what the typical fan of this genre wants to look at.Conor Gallagher (Bill Pullman) is a U.S. Marshal with a checkered past. He was addicted to pills, involved in a deadly shootout that left 3 other Marshals dead, lost his marriage and hasn't seen his daughter in a year and a half. Despite all that, as well as being the sort of maniac who shoots his washing machine when it acts up, he's assigned to guard federal judge Faith Mattis (Lena Olin) after an attempt on her life. What Conor and Faith quickly get caught up in is a military scandal with a renegade witness and U.S. Army death squads running all over the place. After Conor is framed for beating up a crack whore, he and the judge go on the run to get to the bottom of a mystery that improbably turns into an attempted coup and what technically has to be the biggest "running away while something explodes behind you" scene in movie history.There's no other way to put this except to be blunt. The biggest problem with Ignition is that Lena Olin looks way too old to be playing this part in this sort of film. She can still be sexy, just not as the lead female in an action flick. Yes, it wouldn't have made any sense to cast some hot 28 year old as a federal judge. That doesn't really matter in a story that's already asking you to believe the President of the United States travels in a motorcade consisting of two motorcycle cops and a few stretch limos; that has a group of military officers discuss treason like white guys at a country club making jokes about Jews; and has not one, not two, but three "running away while something explodes behind you" scenes. Casting Olin here is like making Helen Mirren the love interest in a Steven Seagal movie.Olin's inappropriateness for this material actually makes you think they're trying to do something different. It causes Faith's quarrelsome relationship with Conor to look like something more than the tired, old act where the two leads drive each other crazy until they fall in love. Then they do fall in love and you realize it was just the same tired, old stuff.Ignition also appears to be going a different way when it lets Conor have an entirely reasonable reaction to the discovery of the secret military plot. He doesn't want to do anything about it. He wants to let somebody else handle it because he's more concerned about his own personal situation. But then he abandons that surprisingly non-heroic stance for no apparent reason and starts doing the same stuff as every other action movie hero.This movie also has too many characters and too much plot that just kills time until Ignition is long enough to qualify as a legitimate feature film. It's nice for a while to watch an action flick that's a bit more involved, but when you end up with two separate reluctant witnesses to the military plot and a main villain, the main villain's chief henchman, the chief henchman's sub-henchman and a bunch of cannon fodder, in addition to ex-spouses for both lead characters, it goes a step too far. It's all a bunch of manufactured nonsense to compensate for not having enough real story to last for 90 minutes.This movie is well acted and well directed enough to be entertaining, if you can get past the fact that the main sex object of this melodrama looks like she's a member of AARP.

That's the word, watchable, when it's not very good, full of flaws, stretches the suspension of disbelief by making you consciously do it rather than forgetting that you're doing it. The usual running a whole block faster than a speeding car, escaping the exhaust gases from a huge rocket, and a judge who would be kicked off the bench for doing half the things she does in the movie and wouldn't do them anyway. She acts more like a rebellious teenager than a person who is at the level of a federal appeals court deciding cases of great national interest. Bill Pullman is just too self-destructive to be interesting. His kid is great, and that tries to make up for it. How come I'm not a helicopter pilot? Everybody else is. Oh, well. I don't like it when they cheat on the fights, showing so little that a baby could out do a whole ninja battalion. I keep writing in the hope that I'll find something other than the daughter. I guess not. See, the basic flaw is that he wouldn't be as self-destructive as he is if he were as heroic as he is.

Despite being fired for drug use and violent conduct, Conor Gallagher returns as a US Marshall to protect lawyer Faith Mattis when her life is threatened as part of some sort of bombing campaign against certain high-profile people. At first Gallagher tires of Mattis' attitude and accepts her threat of having him reassigned. But when he saves her life from an attack, he is kept on and finds himself rescuing her from a solider that has gone awol and thinks someone is trying to kill him. Starting to put the pieces together with her though, brings both of them into danger from powers that are more than just criminal.The presence of Bill Pullman made me overlook the Monday night slot on channel 5 – usually a dumping ground for direct-to-video action movies with no names and no real value. When the film opens with a nicely washed out scene, I also ignored the clichés of the shoot-out and the predictable route it takes. However the next scene is 9 months later and Gallagher is "washed-up™" but brought back into the fold and it was here that I realised this was only going one way. The film keeps the actual "plot" at bay for the majority of the running time and instead just keeps producing narrow misses and bangs along with some vague attempts at characterisation. When the true plot actually comes out, it is pretty poor and unconvincing – with the ideas being as realistic as the shuttle backdrop.The bangs are just wheeled out with little realism and they didn't engage me at all, while the characters aren't anything interesting or different. The film's mood swings around as well – at times it wants to be serious but other times we have joking in the face of danger; the swings don't fit together that well and gives the film an unsure feel. The cast are caught up in this and it shows. Pullman tries to do something serious with the role but also ends up being a clichéd quipping action star; he never fitted into the genre and I couldn't shake the feeling that he is really better than this. Olin also seems ill at ease in it and comes across like she is trying to do something with nothing (and achieving nothing). Feore is a "rent-a-baddie" here and adds little value, while Kent and Harris are just henchmen to be knocked off after a bit of stand-offing. Lea and Ironside are familiar faces but add nothing more than that.Overall this is an average thriller at best. All the clichés are there and are delivered without imagination or effort by a cast who mostly deserve to be in better stuff than this. No better or worse than a lot of the video thrillers doing the rounds as television filler but that isn't any sort of recommendation.

Spoilers herein.This little disaster probably resulted from 9-11. I get the impression that the project was halted halfway through and was just shoved out in this form.No great loss. But it does have two interesting elements. The first is Lena Olin. I think she is one of the most interesting woman in film. Some talent, deep training, cinematic poise. I appreciate actors who understand levels. She does, but doesn't quite have the chops to pull them off, so you can see in her eyes the intent. It is an exotic seduction.The second is this director who seems to be on the "artistic" edge of TeeVee production. He does a lot of adventurous things with the camera for no apparent reason, but then sometimes it clicks. For instance, the opening sequence is pretty thrilling in a Karwai manner: all black and white except for red architectural elements. No angle natural, no perspective right angled, no movement of humans in any way related to the position of the camera. Again, the same thing when one witness is caught and killed by the mean old Army guys.I get the impression that this could have been worth watching for these two elements of style if the project had been funded enough for someone to wrestle this director's impulses into shape.Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 4: Has some interesting elements.