I’ll admit that I watched this one just because I just watched Bruce Willis more-or-less in Midnight in the Switchgrass, another thriller where he more-or-less-but-mostly-less stars. And since I’d seen Cosmic Sin earlier this year, I figured I’d be a completionist and watch all the Bruce Puts In the Minimal Effort for the Maximum Paycheck films of 2021. This one didn’t disappoint… or, rather, it disappointed a great deal but was exactly what I thought it was going to be.

Out of Death is about a woman (played by Jaime King) who goes off into the woods to scatter her father’s ashes. She stumbles upon a crooked cop up to no good and catches the crime on her camera. Now she’s on the run with the whole sheriff’s office out to stop her. Can Bruce Willis wander into the movie and save her?

This is a comically inept film… almost fascinating in the way it wanders aimlessly around, switching characters half-way through, switching tones half-way through. Because I think some of this is supposed to be funny? Maybe? I mean… the villainous cops banter back and forth in a way that might be attempts at comedy. And they do get a twangy fiddle score that seems like its meant to be funny. And the title… Out of Death… is that… I think… a play on “out of breath”… which might be a joke?

What is definitely funny is watching Bruce Willis wander into frame, do some acting, and then lumber back into the forest like a bald sasquatch who isn’t getting paid enough to be in civilization any longer than contractually necessary. It’s kind of funny watching the script come up with reasons to send him in a different direction that the woman he’s allegedly protecting. Or to do the calculus to determine if that’s him or his bald stand-in…

Jaime King, nominally the star of the movie, also has a surprising lack of screen time. So much of the film is focused on the crooked cops that it seems quite apparent even she might have been on set only for a contractually allotted time. And I wouldn’t have blamed her.

This is a very bad, weirdly scripted film that is inept in so many creative ways. It’s kind of so-bad-its-good… like I could see this at a midnight screening with fans roasting it on the nightly. I think this was an earnest attempt at a crime thriller that botched itself very impressively. I should give it a slightly higher score for that reason alone. I mean… I wasn’t bored, so credit due.

But I think I’m being plenty charitable.

Score: 59