Survive the Night is another one of those DTV movies Bruce Willis made for Emmett/Furla. I watched it hot on the heels of their other 2020 collaboration, Hard Kill. After sitting through that thoroughly forgettable actioner, I had my expectations way low for this one, seeing as it was also from the same director (Matt Eskandari). That was for the best too, because as it turns out, it is one of Willis’ best latter-day DTV efforts. It also happens (by default) to be one of the best movies of the year. Hey, in 2020, you take what you can get.
Chad Michael (One Tree Hill) Murray stars as a disgraced doctor who is forced to move his family back in with his folks. His grumpy father (Willis) is upset with the way he’s conducted himself lately and the two are barely on speaking terms. When a thief (Tyler Jon Olson, who’s also in Hard Kill) is wounded during a liquor store robbery, his hotheaded brother (Shea Buckner) is desperate to get him medical attention. They follow Murray home from his new job at a walk-in clinic, break into the house, hold everyone hostage, and force him to perform emergency surgery at gunpoint.
Survive the Night is a bit of a throwback movie. The Desperate Hours-type scenario has been around for ages. The use of one primary location also helps to disguise the low budget. Contrast the dark house in the middle of nowhere to Hard Kill’s ugly abandoned factory setting. It’s a much more organic and believable situation. It also isn’t as noticeable that the filmmakers are trying to conveniently shoot around Bruce’s schedule this time out, which helps a bit too.
While it feels more like a real movie than many of Willis’ cobbled-together efforts, it is still far from perfect. The set-up is slow to build momentum and there is a LOT of exposition regarding Murray’s shady past. It also gets a little repetitive as it comes down the home stretch as there are probably one too many escape-recapture-escape sequences.
Since I’m a fan of the home invasion thriller subgenre, I was probably a bit more forgiving of Survive the Night’s shortcomings. Those shortcomings are small potatoes compared to many of Willis’ recent outings though. The film is surprisingly effective, reasonably efficient, and solidly entertaining. Heck, it almost seems like Die Hard next to the completely underwhelming Hard Kill.
Murray does a better than anticipated job in the hero role, and he and Willis make for a fairly solid team. Willis nicely plays a character a bit older than he is, and imbues him with a sliver bit more grizzled swagger than I was expecting. This is the kind of “Old Man” role Robert Duvall used to play. It will be interesting to see if Willis is able to turn a corner in his career if and when he eventually embraces his age and takes on more of these types of roles. If anything, Survive the Night certainly proves there’s a bit more life in him than many give him credit for.
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