#35 "Breakaway"

Stats: 2002. Starring Dean Cain, Erika Eleniak, Eric Roberts. R.

Background: This movie—a TV film that I think ran on TNT or a similar cable channel—came out my junior year of college. I wanted to watch it when it was on TV, but I someone else must have been watching the hall TV that night.

I pretty much forgot about this movie—known as Christmas Rush when it aired on TV—until Christmas. My brother and sister-in-law found a copy in a discount bin, and Andrew couldn’t resist! He did tell me I didn’t have to feel obligated to keep it!

Reactions: Wow. This movie is spectacularly terrible! I think it’s trying to be a Die Hard movie … and not really succeeding! The dialog is stilted and cheesy, the acting isn’t much better than the dialog, and it’s like the writers tried to throw in every action movie cliché in the book!

Dean Cain plays a Chicago cop who has been suspended for using excessive force in an arrest. (We see said arrest, and the person being arrested—a member of a Chinese gang—and his henchmen start firing on the officers with machine guns. I’m not quite sure how Cain’s character—who at first is unarmed—uses excessive force.) His wife works at Chicago’s most upscale mall, and after having a fight with her on Christmas Eve—about what I can’t remember—Cain heads to the mall at closing to make up. Of course, Christmas Eve is also the night Jimmy, a reformed criminal who is forced back into stealing because he needs money to pay for his son’s bone marrow transplant, decides to steal the cash from the week's sales as it heads from the mall to the bank. And, of course, Jimmy and Cain know each other, as Cain has arrested him multiple times and their children are in the same musical program.

And then we’re treated to an hour and a half of Dean Cain running around trying to stop Jimmy and his goons—and these are truly some of the stupidest criminals in the movies. One of them even blows himself up with a grenade. We see lots of machine gun fire, some intense fighting sequences, and even Dean Cain swinging on a giant Christmas decoration several stories off the ground. Cain’s partner turns out to be in cahoots with Jimmy and dies in an explosion. Then, in the end, Jimmy is caught—but only after being fatally shot. Cain gets a reward from the mall’s insurance company—on Christmas Day, no less—and he gives the money to Jimmy’s widow to pay for their son’s hospital bills.

Breakaway is ridiculously stupid, and I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone. It may even be dumber than Bailey’s Billions, a feat that’s hard to imagine. Oh, and about the rating—there is no explicable reason for this movie to be rated R. The case says it’s rated R for violence, but the violence is way milder than what you can see any night of the week on network TV. Sure, there’s lots of gunfire, but rarely does anyone actually get hit—and when people are injured, the amount of blood shown is minimal.

Verdict: Sell (if anyone will actually buy it!)