There should be a Rule. If an "Actor" appears on the Cover of a Video, He or She has to Appear in more than Five Minutes of Screen Time. Bruce Willis, in another Poster Paycheck Role might just make that cut in this Overly Slick DTV, but Barely.

The other "Actors" in this Badly Written and Conceived Movie seem to be as Disinterested as Willis. Striking Goofy Tough Guy and Gal Poses Delivering Lame Lines and Trying to Look Pretty, makes this a Cringe Inducer and an Embarrassment to all concerned.

It's one of those that's Played as Tongue-in-Cheek to make it all seem Forgivable Fun and the Bottom of the Barrell is the End Credits where it Presents Side-Bar Hilarity with Characters that didn't have Enough Charisma to warrant Caring about in the Previous 90 Minutes.

It's Forgettable Gloss, Painted with Bright Colors, Little Suspense, and the Gun Battles and Chases are Ridiculous. Half of the Wasted Budget must have been Spent on Bullets coming from Guns Fired by People that are Firing Range Deficient.

A Movie so Thin that can only be Tolerated by the Lowest-Common-Denominator Fan that asks nothing of a Film and that's Exactly what They Get with this one. Nothing. Bruce Willis has become a Deceiving Decadent Whore.

At the outset, you should be aware that I am not a huge fan of action films. However, I do enjoy a good and well made action film...such as "Die Hard". And, speaking of "Die Hard", Bruce Willis co-stars in this one...but in this case he is not the action hero but the crazy and mega-dangerous villain. As for Precious Cargo, it was exciting and was filled with explosions, gun fire and stunts...but not a whole lot else.

When the film begins, Jack (Mark-Paul Gossalaar) is working a mission with his team. However, he is nearly killed in the process when his deal to supply weapons to some baddies runs amok. It seems that he and his friends are criminals...cheating other criminals. But now that this case is over, it's time to relax...but this break doesn't last long. This is because Jack's old evil girlfriend, Karen (Claire Forlani) arrives...right in the middle to Jack making sweet love to his new sweetie. Talk about awkward! So why has this evil succubus of a woman returned? Well, Jack doesn't have time to ask because before you know it, a group of nasty assassins arrive and blow the crap out of his home...and Jack and the two women barely escape and then proceed to have a long chase using speedboats. This boating sequence is rather reminiscent of some of the James Bond films, by the way.

Soon after miraculously dispatching all the baddies chasing them, Jack learns that a maniac mobster, Eddie (Bruce Willis) is behind the attack. Eddie is trying to kill Karen as this conniving woman has cheated him and he's willing to let bygones be bygones...after he and his men kill her. Unfortunately for Jack, he just happens to be in the way. He's also an idiot and keeps falling for Karen's lies and manipulations.

At this point in the film, I wasn't particularly disappointed in the movie. While the characters were all very one-dimensional and underdeveloped, the stunts were crazy exciting. However, soon the film started falling apart for me...just because the writing became insane. Having Jack and his gang of misfits decide to steal $500,000,000 worth of diamonds from the CIA was just idiotic. You can't just steal this much from the government this easily!! Plus, should the viewers be rooting for people who are thieves...and rooting against some other thieves?! Well, it certainly is confusing and the film just stopped making much sense.

So was there much I liked about the film? As I already mentioned, the stunts were impressive. Additionally, Willis made for a very menacing villain...and I liked seeing him in this sort of role. I also liked seeing the nice Mississippi coast location shoot. Otherwise, I thought the film could have used less stunts and more in the way of hashing out its characters and plot.

For the person who loves action, action, action, this isn't a bad film. For anyone wanting more from a movie, you could easily find better.

Saw 'Precious Cargo' because Bruce Willis has done good films and given good performances in the past, 'Die Hard' is a genre landmark and his performance is iconic in that. The title and poster also intrigued and similarly the idea for the story sounded sort of interesting, despite a lack of originality. Expectations were not high though, because Willis has been past prime for a while (several bad films and has looked tired and disengaged a lot) and has been in a lot of stinkers lately.

'Precious Cargo' is yet another not good representation of him, if not as bad as 'Vice' and especially 'Reprisal'. 'Precious Cargo' is a better film to that while having similar, actually even the same, faults. It fails in the action and thrills stakes, faring very unfavourably in relation to other films seen in the genre, lots of silliness and endless predictability. Not hating it with pleasure, it's my honest opinion and my negative feelings towards it are regrettable.

Not much redeemable here, with the best thing being the promising opening scene before the film quickly goes down south in quality and not only doesn't ever recover but it gets worse.

However, for someone highly billed, Willis is used poorly (again, am seeing a pattern here),he looks tired and like he didn't want to be there. Claire Forlani also looks disinterested. The worst performance comes from Jenna B Kelly, whose performance is an awful mess of being obnoxious and generating little personality.

Visually, the film does lack cohesion, is pretty sloppy in camera work and editing and the colour scheme is so unappealingly murky. The music is too loud, should have been used far less and some of the placement is inappropriate. The direction is suggestive of inexperience, there is just no energy, momentum or finesse, the non-action oriented parts are handled so indifferently and the action is shot in a way that can be difficult to follow.

Dialogue from the very start to the predictable climax is riddled with clichés and cheese, with toe-curling howlers aplenty, and what little there is of the story has no surprises, fun or tension, is very pedestrian in pace and fails to make sense or have signs of maturity. Tension and suspense are non-existent. 'Precious Cargo' goes overboard on the ridiculousness and lack of plausibility and at other points it takes itself too seriously. What there is of the action is clumsily choreographed and routine at best, too reliant on convenience too and with not much exciting or tense. The characters are not compelling or easy to get behind, too sketchily written and with character behaviours and traits that frustrate. Do not expect every character in every film to be likeable when characters in numerous films purposefully aren't, but it is an issue if there are characters meant to be rootable and 'Precious Cargo' has that problem.

Altogether, other than the opening scene a very bad film. 2/10 Bethany Cox