Danny (Ty Shelton) is bullied at school. In order to combat this Wallstreet dad (Hayden Christensen as Will) and surgeon mom (Megan Leonard as Laura) immediately take off from their jobs and head to upstate NY so Danny can shoot his first deer. That will solve everything. We are introduced to Marvin Howell (Bruce Willis) and are told there is some bank trouble. At this point the we know the formula.

In spite of knowing what will happen, the film is a fairly decent thriller. Danny bonds with the bad guy to gain some self esteem. What the story misses is how Danny handles the bully afterwards.

Guide: F-word. No sex or nudity.

FIRST KILL is yet another disappointing effort from director Steven C. Miller, whose AGGRESSION SCALE appears to be his only decent work. This one is scuppered by a forgettable, cliched and small-scale storyline and a super-fast shooting schedule of just two weeks. Hayden Christenson (remember him? thought not) plays a father who gets into trouble with some ne'er-do-well characters, one of whom kidnaps his kid. Half of this seems to be about the usual firearm glorification while the rest is made up with autopilot Bruce Willis doing his usual extended cameo. It's familiar and boring in equal measure, the viewer never once getting invested in the tired antics on screen.

Saw 'First Kill' because Bruce Willis has done good films and given good performances in the past, 'Die Hard' is a genre landmark and his performance is iconic in that. The title and poster also intrigued. Have an appreciation for action and the idea for the story sounded interesting. Expectations were not high though, because Willis has been past prime for a while (several bad films in recent years and has looked tired and disengaged a lot).

'First Kill' is not a good representation of him, if not as bad as the recent 'Reprisal' and 'Vice'. 'First Kill' is a better film to that while having similar, actually even the same, faults. It fails in the action stakes, faring very unfavourably in relation to other films seen in the genre, and while anything involving abductions and rescues have been very engagingly done on film 'First Kill' manages to portray it with no thrills complete with dull pacing, lots of silliness and endless predictability. Not hating it with pleasure, it's my honest opinion and my negative feelings towards it are regrettable.

Will say that there are more visually amateurish films around, there are moments where there is slickness and style and the photography is nowhere near as disorganised as that for 'Reprisal' or 'Vice'.

Gethin Anthony gives the best, and only halfway decent, performance of the film, actually looking as if he was trying.

However, Willis spends the whole time looking tired with the world and like he wanted to be somewhere else but coerced into doing the film instead. Hayden Christensen fares marginally better but completely lacks intensity and even charisma, very anaemic. Everybody else is bland and annoying, excepting Anthony.

Visually, the film does lack cohesion on the whole. The music is too loud, should have been used far less and some of the placement is inappropriate. There is just no energy, momentum or finesse in the direction and the non-action oriented parts are handled so indifferently. Dialogue from the very start to the contrived climax is riddled with clichés and cheese, some real howlers in the misplaced humorous elements, and the story has no surprises, fun or tension, is very pedestrian in pace and suffers most from throwing in too many elements/turns that it all becomes confusing.

Tension and suspense are non-existent. 'First Kill' goes overboard on the ridiculousness and lack of plausibility and at other points it takes itself too seriously. The action-oriented scenes are clumsily choreographed, sloppily edited and not exciting or suspenseful at all. The characters are not compelling or easy to get behind, due to not being developed properly and the relationships being uninteresting. Do not expect every character in every film to be likeable when characters in numerous films purposefully aren't, but it is an issue if there are characters meant to be rootable and 'First Kill' has that problem.

Concluding, weak but not a complete shambles. 3/10 Bethany Cox