Gridlocked Movie Review

Gridlocked (2016)

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Written by:  Rob Robol, Allan Ungar
Directed by: Allan Ungar
Starring:   Dominic Purcell, Cody Hackman, Stephen Lang, Danny Glover, Vinnie Jones, 
Rated: R

 Plot:
In this Netflix exclusive, a movie stars ride along with a former special forces cop is cut short when a police facility is attacked.

Verdict:
This movie is incredibly derivative. There is a reason it didn't get a wide theater release and that's because it's not good.
Skip it.

Review:
This movie is riddled with cliches. It's got David Hendrix (Dominic Purcell) as a former special forces veteran cop playing strong and silent as he baby sits a whiny actor who is riding with him as an act of community service to avoid jail. That's not community service. The movie could have just as easily had it been research for a role, and this was forced on the veteran cop, but why waste time on logic.

This reminded me a bit of Sabotage (2014), in that they're both disappointing action movies, but Gridlocked makes that look like a really good movie. It's not. Not at all. At least Sabotage had well known actors.

This does have Danny Glover. He has gotten old. He's the head of security at a secret special forces base. Instead of a metal detector or scanners, this base has Glover. He looks at your identification, looks at you, and decides whether to push the big red button that lets you in. Then another security guard visually inspects any toolboxes you might be carrying.

Gridlocked - Interchangeable with many made for DVD movies.

Can you guess where this is going? This special forces base just happens to be sitting on many valuables. This ensures a group of mercenaries led by Stephen Lang and Vinnie Jones will rob the place.

Hendrix takes the actor to the base because how else would they both be there at the right time. Hendrix is challenged to 'kill house'  training. I expected much more. Kill house is a plywood maze with posters on the wall. I expected anamatronics, things popping out of nowhere, lights, and sound. No, kill house reveals the low budget. It's menacing posters taped to plywood. You shoot them. this whole sequence is present just to reinforce how awesome Hendrix is. He's going to save the day if you haven't already guessed.

The robbery kicks off and the big reveal is that none of the security wear kevlar vests. An EMP (electro-magnetic pulse) knocks out all electronics. Even assuming the EMP was sized just to affect the building, it would prevent anything electronic from working. Just because the video cameras were turned off during the pulse, doesn't mean the bad guys can turn them right back on after. It also means the defibrillator wouldn't work. Also, it's unlikely the generator would turn all the lights back on in the building. This movie is silly.
Nothing in this movie makes sense. The mercenaries posing as SWAT don't wear vests.

This is two hours long! Why would you make it that long? It's torture. Hendrix straight up murders the I.T. guy at the end. This guy may have been a civilian kidnapped by the the bad guys. Hendrix doesn't care, he doesn't ask questions, he just murders him. THE END. This movie is pure, stinking trash. It's garbage.