Movie Review - Ghost Soldier

Full disclosure: I’ve never played the video game this is based on, so I can’t comment on that relationship. I can only offer my opinion on this as an action movie fan.

Ghost Soldier is the worst movie, action or otherwise, that I’ve seen in at least the past few years. Thinking back, the last (https://runpee.com/movie-review-hellboy/) movie was the last time I remember being in a theater and absolutely perplexed that something could be so bad.

7:42●●● 95%

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Action

The fight scenes are ponderous. The only remotely creative part of the movie are the weapons, which I have no doubt are lifted straight out of the video game. And even then, I didn’t see a single weapon that I haven’t seen in a dozen other movies before. Nothing wowed me.

Script/Plot

I have to start with the choice of villain: data centers and water? Really? First, this is Wyoming. The state that destroys more countryside than any other to mine coal. But sure. Data centers and water are the bad guy here. Whatever.

There is an element of truth in the Middle Eastern influence behind the water theft. That really happened in Southern Arizona. In operation Fondomonte, the Saudi government bought up farms to grow alfalfa because there were no water restrictions on how much water could be pulled up through a well. So, with all the money in the world, they just sucked the aquifers dry. There’s your true story bad guy, but sure, let’s pivot to data centers and water because some brilliant writer read a few headlines.

Acting

Jim Caviezel may be a genius. Maybe he read his lines and thought, “This dialoge is horrible. Maybe if I softly mumble my way through all of my lines then no one will be able to understand me.” Except no, that’s how he acts in all of his roles. Jim, dude, barely speaking your lines isn’t acting. Please, take an acting class.

The acting throughout the movie is abysmal, but I’m letting the actors off the hook, because the plot and dialog are so bad that an all-star cast couldn’t have saved this movie.

One Good Thing

There’s only one actor in this movie that showed up and said, “You know what? I don’t care what a pile of crap script I was handed. I’m going to own this character.” That’s Beau Knapp as the lead thug. It isn’t that all of his scenes are good. But in a few of them you can see an actor that is really trying to do something with a character. Everyone else is cardboard.

Grade: F

Plot
Henry “Fitz” Fitzgerald has spent years living quietly off the grid, hiding from a past few people know anything about. But when a powerful foreign corporation moves into his hometown to seize his neighbors’ land for a massive payday, Fitz is forced to reveal who he really is: a former Special Forces soldier and advanced weapons developer. Armed with experimental technology, lethal combat skills, and an unwavering code of justice, Fitz wages a one-man war against an enemy that never saw him coming.