Jack spends his morning hitting golf balls off the pier, imagining himself one shot away from getting a green jacket. It’s a peaceful enough practice until it all goes wrong. Jack is waiting for a serious chunk of cash in a weapons exchange. There seems to be some confusion and, well, disagreements are had, shots are fired and bodies are dropped.
Somewhere in the Cayman Islands, crime boss Eddie Filosa (Bruce Willis, in the latest of his paycheck movies) is planning a heist that will be the ultimate score. This hits a bump when thief Karen (Claire Forlani, 2013’s ANOTHER ME) butts her nose in a little too far. Forced to dodge Eddie, who wants her to make up for the loss in botching the multi-million dollar job, Karen arrives at Jack’s (Mark-Paul Gosselaar, TNT’s FRANKLIN & BASH, which went off the air in 2014, although he will always be best remembered as Zach Morris on SAVED BY THE BELL) house. Interestingly (read: for no apparent reason at all), Karen is pregnant. But it’s not just pickles and chocolate cake she’s after. She wants Jack on her side so she can pull off the heist in question, thus avoiding having to sleep with the fishes (or whatever other cliché Eddie would use to describe murdering her).
PRECIOUS CARGO is an action movie in that there are speedboat chases, car chases, gunfights, knifeplay, armored cars, team assemblages/team meetings, bikini-clad bimbos, horrendous one-liners and on and on. Those who have seen even one made-for-television action flick will recognize a good chunk of these as easy go-to inclusions. And that’s exactly what PRECIOUS CARGO thinks it can get by on. PRECIOUS CARGO, as the plot and cast alone would suggest, is a complete disaster with no brains or originality to be found.
Gosselaar, although in the caliber of such releases, is miscast, and not once does Jack come off like he’s capable of anything past feeding a dog. Sure, Gosselaar can hold a prop gun, but the lines he’s given to say are less intimidating to the baddies than they are laughable to the viewer. (An example: “You wanna play games? I’ll have you know I hate games. I quit grade school because of motherf*cking recess!” This explains much more than he thinks it does…) At the same time, Willis does so much to further embarrass himself in less than 15 minutes of screentime, playing a character who uses chess as a metaphor for life, even though his mental capacity would appear to stop at “heads up, seven up.”
PRECIOUS CARGO is the debut of Max Adams, who wrote 2015’s HEIST, also starring Gosselaar. With Paul V. Seetachitt, he has written a thin, flimsy and just plain awful movie, entirely worthy of the Lionsgate Premiere stamp. PRECIOUS CARGO would be a surefire Razzie contender, if only the committee had the displeasure of even hearing about it.
BLU-RAY REVIEW
Video: 2.40:1 in 1080p with MPEG-4 AVC codec. Considering the production value, PRECIOUS CARGO looks good here, with an overall crisp picture.
Audio: English 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio. Subtitles in English and Spanish. Dialogue is clear overall and the SFX come through the speakers with intended effect.
The Making of PRECIOUS CARGO (14:37) uses clips and interviews to give an overview of the movie.
Cast/Crew Interviews (43:54): Collected here are interviews with Mark-Paul Gosselaar, Claire Forlani, Jenna Kelly, director/co-writer Max Adams, co-writer Paul Seetachitt and producer Scott Mann. Viewable separately or as a whole.
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