A bank heist gone awry leads to the criminals involved turning on each other; while trying to figure out who betrayed them and why. 10 Minutes Gone is being marketed as a suspenseful crime thriller, but woefully lacks in both suspense and thrills. It didn’t take ten minutes of screentime to sniff out a rather obvious villain. What follows is a jumble of horrendous dialogue, cardboard acting, and ridiculous gunplay. 10 Minutes Gone wastes the talent of two Hollywood greats. Bruce Willis and Michael Chiklis are just collecting a paycheck here.
10 Minutes Gone opens with a newly formed gang prepping to rob a bank. Frank (Michael Chiklis) is a seasoned safecracker. His younger brother, Joe (Tyler Jon Olson), was recently released from prison. The brothers and their cohorts were enlisted for the job by Rex (Bruce Willis), a criminal mastermind who planned the operation. What should have been an easy score ends in chaos and confusion. An alarm that was supposedly cut rings and alerts the police.
Frank wakes up after being knocked out for ten minutes by an unseen attacker. The package he stole is gone. The cops are closing in. The gang has separated and its every man for himself. Frank is soon on the run with his brother’s girlfriend (Meadow Williams). Rex thinks he’s been betrayed. Frank is convinced one of the others sold them all out. He hunts down his former accomplices to discover the truth. Rex unleashes his cleaner (Lydia Hull) to get the package back and liquidate the gang.
10 Minutes Gone uses Rashomon style flashbacks to recount Frank’s missing time. Every baddie he scrapes up tells the bank robbery from their point of view. These are the most annoying and frustrating scenes in the film. The robbery is poorly shot and edited. The hapless criminals unload torrents of bullets while scattering to the wind. We end up seeing the same lame action over and over again. It’s near torturous to sit through, and especially aggravating because the replays have little impact on the outcome.
The characters are dull and generic. The ensemble cast spout their cookie-cutter lines like they received the script on the same day. This ain’t Shakespeare. I lost count how many times they used the words “secondary” and “back-up” to describe the bungled heist. Bruce Willis, who only shares one brief scene with Michael Chiklis, looks abjectly bored the entire film. It’s a dialed-in effort without a shred of emotion. Michael Chiklis has a lot more to do, but doesn’t add any gravitas or punch to the protagonist. A total letdown from an actor that normally commands the screen with intensity. The heavyweight leads are big disappointments.
10 Minutes Gone has nothing positive to recommend. A foolish plot with a bad script couldn’t be saved. The action scenes look amateurish and are dreadfully boring. It boggles the mind that an all-time action legend like Bruce Willis would star in such nonsense. He and Michael Chiklis deliver a stinker. 10 Minutes Gone is a production of EFO and MoviePass Films with theatrical and on demand distribution by Lionsgate.
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