Through either design or necessity, John Cusack and Ryan Phillipe have both become regular fixtures on the VOD thriller circuit, so it was almost inevitable that their paths would cross eventually. When they did, con artist tale Reclaim couldn’t even scam its way to a single positive review.
On Rotten Tomatoes, the forgotten 2014 flick holds a mighty score of zero percent, and you know things are bad when the faintest praise directed towards Alan White’s dud is that there’s some nice scenery on display in amongst the half-baked plot twists and obvious foreshadowing.
That being said, Netflix users have regularly proven themselves partial to the odd slice of brainless escapism, so we shouldn’t be all that surprised to discover that Reclaim has been making its way up the platform’s worldwide most-watched rankings over the weekend, per FlixPatrol.
Phillipe and Rachelle Lefevre play a pair of prospective parents to head to Puerto Rico to complete the adoption of an orphaned child, but they find themselves drawn into a nonsensical plot involving bar fights, fake agencies, illicit underground activity, trafficking, kidnapping, and more besides, with Cusack’s enigmatic Benjamin right at the center of the storm.
To be fair, the scenery is genuinely nice to look at, it’s just a shame the story doesn’t even contemplate coming close to matching the visuals. The two top-billed stars have been and almost certainly are capable of much better, but sometimes all streaming subscribers want to do between Friday night and Sunday morning is whittle away 90 minutes without having to think, a front on which Reclaim does manage to deliver.
Published: Aug 7, 2022 12:29 pm