SETUP is a very cheap heist thriller shot in the wilds of Michigan. There are a lot of familiar actors on board but most just turn up to get the pay cheque and go again. The story feels half hearted and the greyed-out look works against it, giving it a cookie cutter feel. However, the film isn't quite as bad as I was fearing, and at least it's short and fast-paced, which means you won't really get bored about it.The story is about the familiar fall-out among thieves that takes place early on. The heist scene is well shot and brings to mind HEAT in its depiction of a large-scale shoot-out, definitely the best part of the movie. However, 50 Cent is a poor choice for the lead and quite unlikeable, while Ryan Philippe is miscast for his part. Bruce Willis is prominently featured on the cover but gets little screen time other than to intone gruff dialogue in a room for ten minutes or so. Randy Couture has a very small role too. At least the action's okay, with a foot chase in the second half that really captivates.

As I'm sure with most people I only watched this because of the names attached; Bruce Willis, Ryan Phillippe and 50 Cent, thinking this has to be a decent movie even though I've never heard of it before. It was not. This was mostly a waste of time. Willis, despite the top billing on the poster is hardly in the movie and Phillippe just doesn't cut it as the bad guy despite all his tattoos. The script is weak, and the double crossed thief revenge thriller has been done way too many times before.50 does a decent enough job but he's just not a very good actor and the plot for the most part is based around his act of vengeance after his former partner in crime and childhood friend attempts to take him out after a major diamond heist. 'Sonny' then employs the help of a feared (but laughably stereotypical) mob boss (Willis)to help him recover the cash.There are a couple of other sub-plots running regarding Philippe's jailed father (James Remar), Jenna Dewan has a great scene with a glass table, we also get Randy Couture as a lame-brained thug and Shaun Toub as a mysterious hit-man who skulks about searching for the stolen diamonds -I actually enjoyed him.There are moments of Guy Ritchie-ness here too in the way they introduce "the muscle" 'the hit man" "the mob boss" and I suppose also in how all the story arc's connect and go awry.Ultimately a bit of a fail and not a movie I will remember anything about come tomorrow. 7/26/15

(25%) A direct to DVD crime action flick staring a rapper who really can't carry a movie, Bruce Willis who's earning a pay cheque, and the guy with the cauliflower ears from the expendables movies. The plot is tried and tested, and has been done far too many times for something as utterly routine as this to make any sort of impact. To top it off, this actually knows that it's not only poorly crafted, but maybe even worse, indicates that it has such low opinions of its audience that key characters are actually labeled such as "The driver", "The mob boss", "The hit-man" etc so even simpletons can keep up, and the writers can go home early. But really if they wanted to make sure nobody gets left behind they should have made a better movie because towards the second half I couldn't really care anymore about anything. This isn't terrible, but even for a direct to video, is why too average to make any sort of mark.

You know, if your going to pinpoint one person as being symbolic of everything that is wrong with straight-to-video movies, it's pretty much ridiculous. I mean, they're straight-to-video movies. Nobody expects anything worthy of mention for them. Yet, that is exactly what I am going to do.Rapper 50 Cent is symbolic of much of what is wrong with straight-to-video movies. It's funny how this guy went from being one of the biggest rappers on earth to a regular in such movies, but he's got a s#!t load of money, so he act/produce these movies. With "Setup", he somehow brings in two bigger stars-Ryan Phillipe and Bruce Willis of all people-into his world of mediocrity.Mr. Cent stars as Sonny, who along with his best friend, is shot (way to be subtle about one of your claims to fame) by Vincent Long (Phillipe) after a heist gone wrong, and now wants revenge. To get this revenge, he teams with the mob, which always works well in these movies. When the mob's muscle Petey (Randy Courture, in a rather thankless role) is shot, and things start to go south, mob boss Biggs (Willis) wants something done about all this.I will say these two things: Willis is good (though only around for like 10 minutes total) and the production values look much better than most straight-to-video movies. Then again, this did cost $20 million to make, which seems like a bit much for something like this, but hey. Apart from that, this is your typical bad cop/heist/whatever movie from Lionsgate and Grindstone Entertainment. That means there's a bad soundtrack made up of dull rock and uninteresting rap, badly written character drama, mostly bad acting (Phillipe's performance could be called bipolar, as he goes from committed to looking like he doesn't want to be there), plot points like a pseudo-religious angle that go nowhere, plot holes the size of craters, and no reason to care about anyone or anything that happens.Then there's 50 Cent. Look, there are rappers that have proved themselves to be good to decent actors. Look at Ice Cube, Ice T, RZA and Mos Def for example. 50 Cent is not one of those good actors. Next to Master P, he's the worst rapper trying his hand at acting I've ever seen. This is a man who is completely void of anything resembling dramatic chops, charisma or screen presence, and serves more as a vacuum than he does an actor. And that's one of the reasons why he's so bad for these kinds of movies. Sure, Phillipe and Willis are clearly there for the paycheck-that or they were blackmailed or owed somebody a favor-but guys like James Remar are talented guys. Yet, this is a vanity project for a man who couldn't act to save his life.If you are a hardcore 50 Cent fan (though I doubt that kind of thing still exists), you will want to see this. Everyone else is better off reading a book or something.