A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. (Are there still bike messengers in sprawling, auto-obsessed, freeway-ridden LA?) Still, the appealing cast is a plus.Īre we not men? We are-well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z (2006).Ī zombie apocalypse is one thing. And so it goes, as the action heats up some but not a whole lot.Ĭapably written, though without the edge of Hoag’s previous thrillers (Dark Horse, 2002, etc.) and a bit formulaic. Next to die: Eta, a single mother of four. Looks like the killing could be somehow connected to Rob Cole (Robert Blake-no, he’s already in jail), a down-on-his-luck movie star accused of murdering his rich, frumpy wife (Kathy Bates). No use explaining that to Lenny’s daughter Abby (Sandra Bullock), whom Jace happens to meet. His curiosity gets the better of him and he opens the mysterious package to find negatives (what, no digital cameras?) that someone known as Predator would kill to get. Jace (Ethan Hawke/Keanu Reeves/Hugh Jackman) is no slouch at outrunning the law and hides out in his crummy Chinatown apartment, sticking to his second job, shoveling ice at a fish market. Disillusioned, middle-aged detective Kev Parker (George Clooney) and his sexy young trainee, Renee Ruiz (Jennifer Lopez), trade wisecracks amidst the gore and start looking for suspects. The bad news: after Jace leaves, Lenny gets his brains splattered all over the ceiling. The good news: he gets a $20 tip from sleazebag attorney Lenny Lowell, who hands him a wrapped package, contents unknown. Can you spell sympathetic antihero? How about made for the movies? Eta, the sassy black dispatcher (Whoopi Goldberg), sends him out on one last run. Jace’s mother is dead, his father unknown, and he has a little brother to support. And if he has to sideswipe a Cadillac, tangle with a security guard, and sneak into an LA office tower filled with suits sneering at his ragged clothes and his beat-up bicycle, so be it. Bike messenger gets mixed up in blackmail.
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