On July 18, the crime action thriller was shown in cinemas «Boneyard» starring Mel Gibson, Curtis «50 Cent» Jackson and Brian Van Holt. The plot of the film is based on the real-life murders of women committed between 2001 and 2005 in Albuquerque and has no connection to The Bone Collector 1999, as one might think. In the review below, we state that even so, it’s better to rewatch the old movie with Jolie and Washington than to waste time on a highly questionable novelty.
Pluses:
are missing;
Minuses:
Absolutely everything in this movie is bad;
«Boneyard»
Genre crime thriller
Director Asif Akbar
Starring Mel Gibson, Curtis Jackson, Brian Van Holt, Nora Zehetner
Premiere movie theaters
Year of release 2024
Website IMDb
2009, Highlands «Western Mesa», Albuquerque, New Mexico. It was there that the buried remains of young women were found accidentally. The local police, represented by Chief Carter and partner detectives Ortega and Young, take up the investigation. They are assisted by an elderly FBI agent — a profiling specialist with the ridiculous surname Petrovick, who has his motives for solving the case. Everything points to the fact that the dead were victims of a serial killer. Will the brave detectives be able to find the killer and make him answer to the law for his horrific deeds?
«Boneyard» is largely the work of screenwriter, producer, director, and God knows what else Asif Akbar, whose filmography consists of a bunch of junk you’ve hardly ever heard of. It’s even a bit strange that this kind of crime thriller has somehow miraculously made it to the big screens, and Ukrainian ones in particular. However, this is exactly the case when it would be better if it hadn’t.
The plot of the film is based on real events, when in 2009, on the territory of the hill «West Mesa», police found the remains of 11 women aged 15 to 32, mostly Latinas, who were engaged in prostitution. One of the victims was four months pregnant. The killer was nicknamed the «West Mesa Bone Collector». Several suspects came to the attention of the police, but in the end, detectives were unable to definitively identify the killer murderer. Perhaps he is still out there somewhere, walking free.
«Boneyard» is positioned as a crime thriller, but you won’t find any tense scenes or storylines here by daylight. The plot consists of useless, absolutely meaningless chases of helpless cops (mainly the character of Brian Van Holt, so he can be conditionally called the main character).
Somewhere on the periphery of the story is the character of Mel Gibson, a maniacal specialist with a dramatic background. During his instructive presentation, we even catch a glimpse of the Jeffrey Dahmer and this mini-lecture will remain the most interesting thing Agent Petrovick does in the entire movie. Aside from that, Gibson will lazily, purely on experience, deliver one shameful shootout and a few pseudo-martyr monologues, and that’s all his mission in the story will be.
In one of the scenes, 50 Cent himself takes up arms, but he does better with a microphone than with a machine gun. Given that the story revolves around call girls, it might seem as if the famous rapper would be unable to resist taking off his strict police uniform to replace it with his usual outfit and sing his famous «I’m a motherf*cking P-I-M-P». But no, there’s no such fun to be had, so Curtis Jackson’s character is the same uninteresting one-dimensional dummy as everyone else.
In general, this is the level of the late filmography of Bruce Willis that is, a painfully low-budget, ridiculous and pointless movie in which everything is bad. But while Die Hard was simply forced to submit to unfortunate circumstances, the local stars are just doing a routine. In fact, everyone involved in the creation of this so-called movie did not think much about the audience. Watching this kind of endlessly boring nonsense is quite an ordeal.
Despite the fact that the screenwriters seem to be trying to lead us down the wrong path, this does not add any intrigue to the dead narrative. What can I say, if the climax here follows the course of real events in a straightforward manner, where it was worthwhile to give at least some artistic fiction. And so it turns out that the viewer’s suffering for 90 minutes will not be rewarded.
What do we get from «Boneyard» as a result? The absence of detective or any other intrigue in a movie billed as a crime thriller about the search for a maniac. Lazy performance of their ridiculous parts by actors who are well aware of what they are acting in. Several crookedly staged shootouts. Bad mood and wasted time. The only conclusion to be drawn from this is that even a bedridden Denzel Washington turned out to be much more interesting and useful than a healthy Gibson with pompous presentations and a gun in his hand.
Spelling error report
The following text will be sent to our editors: