Liberty Stands Still (DVD)

...day in the life of Liberty Wallace. Married to an extremely successful business man, she is en route to a meeting, sat comfortably in the back of her chauffeur-driven Mercedes. Constantly switching between calls on her mobile phone, she speaks intermittently to her husband and to her lover – a youthful actor, to whom she is currently on her way to see. As she leaves the car, and wanders across the city centre park, she is blissfully unaware ...
...the life of Liberty Wallace.

As she crosses the park, her mobile phone rings. Answering the phone, a stranger’s voice tells her that she must do exactly what she is told. Her lover has been captured, and is tied up in front of a motion sensitive bomb. Furthermore, her every move is being watched by a sniper in one of the buildings – a warning shot narrowly misses her, as if to dismiss her scepticism. Instructed to move ... more

As far as she is aware, today is just another normal day in the life of Liberty Wallace. Married to an extremely successful business man, she is en route to a meeting, sat comfortably in the back of her chauffeur-driven Mercedes. Constantly switching between calls on her mobile phone, she speaks intermittently to her husband and to her lover – a youthful actor, to whom she is currently on her way to see. As she leaves the car, and wanders across the city centre park, she is blissfully unaware that today is most certainly not a normal day in the life of Liberty Wallace.

As she crosses the park, her mobile phone rings. Answering the phone, a stranger’s voice tells her that she must do exactly what she is told. Her lover has been captured, and is tied up in front of a motion sensitive bomb. Furthermore, her every move is being watched by a sniper in one of the buildings – a warning shot narrowly misses her, as if to dismiss her scepticism. Instructed to move over to a burger stand, she is guided to inspect the contents of the stand – an enormous bomb that is programmed to detonate as soon as the mobile phone call is terminated for whatever reason. Terrified for her life, Liberty handcuffs herself to the stand, as instructed, and awaits further demands from her captor. And so begins a terrifying psychological ordeal for Liberty. Anyone who comes into contact with her is in danger from the sniper. What does he want? – and more importantly, what does she have to do to stop hundreds of innocent lives being lost at the hands of a crazed terrorist?

At face value, Liberty Stands Still looked like my kind of movie. It claimed to be action-packed, tense stuff – and I’m a huge fan of action movies. It also stars Wesley Snipes and Linda Fiorentino, both of whom I like very much. Sadly, I was rather disappointed with the film – and here are a few of the reasons why.

I wouldn’t say that Liberty Stands Still is a bad film – it’s just slow, oppressive and ultimately quite uninteresting. As a slice of throwaway Hollywood action drama, it is not exciting enough – and as a sharp social observation, it is just not profound enough.

The basic premise of the movie is that the sniper/terrorist (played by Wesley Snipes) is a former CIA agent, whose young daughter has died at the hands of a fellow school child. The school child had somehow got hold of a hand gun, and whilst the children were playing in the playground, Snipes’ daughter accidentally got shot. It’s a tragic enough story, but the subsequent actions of the gun man simply didn’t make any sense to me. When Liberty is first captured, it takes the best part of twenty minutes for the gunman to explain who he is, what has happened and why Liberty has been captured. It turns out that Liberty and her husband own and run a “legitimate” arms manufacturing industry and Snipes holds them responsible for the death of his daughter. The trouble is, he never really makes any demands – it’s not clear whether he wants to avenge his daughter’s death, by killing Liberty and/or her husband, or whether he just wants to use the couple to make a point. The whole issue is confused further by the eventual presence of CIA agents, who in turn do their best to kill Liberty, as it transpires that she knows things that people in certain places would rather did not become public.

Snipes’ motives are questionable from the outset, purely because he seems to have a warped sense of right and wrong. Despite his grief and the anger of the loss of his daughter, he does not hesitate in shooting – and killing – both an innocent policeman and a journalist – purely to further his point. Snipes’ character simply isn’t believable – his ends simply don’t justify his means. The fact of the matter is, the audience needs somebody that they can empathise with, or in whom they can place some trust. Snipes comes across partly as Mr Nice Guy and partly as Mr Nasty – and it’s an uncomfortable balance.

The real emphasis of this movie is based around the psychology – the action never really builds into a significant pace. The tension and apprehension felt by the viewer is developed via the interaction between Snipes and Liberty. It’s worth noting that Liberty spends nearly the entire running time of the film cuffed to the hot dog stand, and the interaction between her and Snipes is slow and painful. In many ways, it could be argued that this was intentional and was intended to enable the audience to empathise with Liberty’s ordeal. Realistically, it just makes the film slow and very difficult to get into. As you can imagine, Liberty tries a number of tricks to draw attention to her situation but it is gradually revealed that Snipes has planned everything down to the last detail – anything that looks like it wasn’t going to happen is apparently planned. For me, this was the killing blow. The awkward characterisation and slow pace would have been acceptable – but when the film then started to become implausible, I’m afraid I just lost interest. Snipes seems to have an unbelievable arsenal of gadgets and technology at his disposal – and major plot details are just too contrived. Let’s face it, no mobile phone signal would remain intact for the length that the call in this film does - I’d like to know which network they were using. If the bad guys can so easily keep tabs on the good guys, why can’t the good guys do the same back??

The whole movie is driven by the political issue of firearm ownership within the US – clearly, the writers felt very strongly about this. The film looks at the corruption of both the arms industry and the government – but the lines between good and bad are so consistently blurred, that you start to forget the point. I couldn’t really see what Snipes was trying to achieve – and after the hour and a half running time had passed, I didn’t feel that his cause had moved any further than it was before he started. The awful irony of this film is that it is theoretically a tragedy about guns, children and death – played out by an apparent mad man who uses guns, and death to get his own way. If I felt that it was deliberate, I would congratulate the writer. As it is, it all seems like a clumsy mistake.

Wesley Snipes struggles visibly with his role. Whilst he is unquestionably good in action roles, his character in this film does a lot more talking, and Snipes struggles with the dialogue. His voice is strained and uncomfortable and he just doesn’t seem to be able to cope with the dramatic demands placed upon him. All of his scenes are ultimately just shots of him at the window, or with a gun in his hands and I decided that he was not the right choice for the part. Linda Fiorentino fares better, but is rather wasted in that she never really gets any scenes away from the burger cart. She initially shows all the trademarks of her sassy, assertive nature, but as Snipes wears her down, she loses much of her original appeal and ends up as conventional as they come.

Liberty Stands Still just doesn’t work for me. Tension eventually becomes boredom, the characters just aren’t right and the whole thing lacks any real point. This film plays like a cheap MTV rock video – unfortunately, it’s about 35 times longer.

Not recommended
 

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