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This action movie, The 2nd, was directed by Brian Skiba and written by Eric Bromberg along with Paul Taegel. The movie draws attention as it features the talented Ryan Phillippe alongside Jack Griffo, Lexi Simonsen, Casper Van Dien, Richard Burgi, and Randy Charach. The story revolves around a Special Forces Agent who attempts to save his son and a friend from a terrorist attack. Like any other good action movie, the film attempts to one-up the other movies in the genre, but its location sets it apart a college campus. The actor, Vic, played by Phillip is a special operator trying to save his son Shawn from being kidnapped by Driver and his goons.
It is only natural to think what happened to the political angle in The 2nd’s narrative. With the current political leadership being in The 2nd, everything suggests it has to play some role. Except for a mundane subplot concerning CIA director Phillips (Burgi), I do not think it ever does! A single goon at a time is a very effective method of fighting. Vic simply persuades the two kids next to him to use this technique when he figures out something is amiss.
In terms of action star archetypes, there is unfortunately zero scope for the following characters so some of them are better than others. One of the characters is Vic Davis. He is a strong enough hero aided by comfortable layers of well managed attention. As a Green Beret and Delta Force operator, he truly loves his work. Sadly for him, he talks to Shawn so little that it feels like he never existed. Pretty much everyone seems to ignore it. Shawn is indeed fine. Having a blunt manner of speech makes this aspiring theater major who enjoys fencing pretty great because he is not useless in the film and is a welcomed change of pace instead of just being deadweight.
On the other hand, Erin serves as little more than a romantic interest for Shawn. For the most part, she is simply present. And at times, she makes poor choices. The Driver, his crew, and the politicians are all just bad cliches. The acting is a bit all over the place. On the one hand, while Burgi and Philippe inject some life to a forgettable character, Griffo is clearly out of his depth. Simonsen and Van Dien utterly do not try; they phone it in at best.
Besides Phillippe, what is responsible for the patchy second part is the action. While the action is nothing special, the fights with Vic are quite enjoyable; one, because Philippe does get a lot of action as in Tae Kwon Do, and two, he performs some impressive hand-to-hand combat where uses most of the surroundings to his advantage.
The shootouts in The 2nd are only mediocre at best, and there is one particular scene when Vic is shooting at a guy on the stairs that is tragically long and monotonous and it is nothing but shot-reverse-shots. Fortunately, hand-to-hand fighting makes up the bulk of the fighting in the movie, and also there was a car chase in the second (get it?) half of the movie that was decent when viewed from a distance, but some obvious doubles detracted from the effect.
While the movie has its own set of budget constraints, the 2nd copes with the limitations fairly well (while some of in-movie explanations like satellites are able to track phones but people? Come aaaaaaahhhhn do feel a little simplistic). The school is a rare location where it is a shame that it does not seem to be one at all. Much of the action takes place in several non-descript hallways dressed up as dorm rooms instead of the insides of any school. There are no staff lounges, no classrooms, and worst of all, no cafeterias.
The pacing is fast and this fact more or less covers the numerous issues concerning the set locations and a lot of the writing. Approximately 80% of Vic’s dialogue is just him shouting Shawn’s name after all. Cinematography is ok. It makes me happy that DoP Adam Biddle avoids the normal low-budget action movie shaky cam syndrome, and makes everything else look at least somewhat three dimensional. It was a little better than the previous one but still has substantial issues.
Skiba’s initial venture in action movies is less than satisfactory. Same goes for The 2nd. There is minimal contextual background and the film picks a rather controversial trigger while failing to elaborate on it. Nonetheless, it contains some decent battles and the man Phillippe delivers a very strong performance. I reckon that’s adequate.
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