24 Hours to Live - Blu-ray

Film: Travis Conrad (Ethan Hawke) was once a highly decorated elite soldier, one of the best mercenaries in his unit. But after the tragic loss of his family, Travis is a broken man who has quit his job and lost all lust for life. But his old buddy Jim (Paul Anderson) manages to recruit Travis for one last, extremely lucrative assignment: He's to take out a target who could pose a threat to some powerful people. But before he can succeed, he is unmasked and shot by Interpol agent Lin Bisset (Qing Xu). Thanks to an experimental procedure by the private military company Red Mountain, Travis is brought back to life for another 24 hours - but only to tell Jim the location of the target. Feeling betrayed, Travis flees - with only one goal in mind: to use his last hours to destroy Red Mountain.

Stunt specialist Brian Smrz, who has served as second unit director on blockbusters such as Iron Man 3, X-Men: Future is the Past and Terminator: Genisys, delivers his second directorial effort of his own with 24 Hours to Live. No question: Smrz can direct good action even on a small budget. This then gives this thriller a pleasantly high entertainment value. However, shootouts and car chases can not completely hide the fact that the script is not exactly one of the great moments of Hollywood writing.

The idea, though not entirely new, is quite exciting and also offers a lot of potential, though this is minimized by numerous clichés and logic holes. The actors are solid, but don't deliver master performances either. However, Ethan Hawke in particular still does a good job as a dying (or actually already dead) action hero, even in down-beat acting mode. And cult star Rutger Hauer (Blade Runner) and Qing Xu (Looper) also do their thing well enough, despite the rather flat dialogue, to make you forget some of the script's weaknesses.

In the '80s, 24 Hours to Live would have been considered typical video store fare, to be found somewhere between the latest flicks from Steven Segal and Jean-Claude Van Damme. If you like simple B-movie action, which is dramaturgically weak, but solidly staged, you can get it here. An entertaining home cinema evening is then also guaranteed. Worth seeing!

Picture + Sound: The image of the Blu-ray impresses with a high image sharpness, which also allows many smaller details to come into their own very well. The color scheme seems a bit artificial, but thus corresponds exactly to the atmosphere of the thriller. The sound shows its strengths right from the start. In addition to the well intelligibly mixed dialogues, sound effects such as gunshots, explosions or squealing car tires repeatedly provide powerful movement in the surround area. Good.

Extras: Unfortunately, the Blu-ray has no bonus material to offer.

Conclusion: 24 Hours to Live is a solid action thriller that, while not quite in the upper echelon of the genre, manages to entertain well despite all the clichés and logic holes. The Blu-ray presents the fast-paced thriller in good picture and sound quality. Only bonus material is unfortunately not available. Overall, however, quite clearly a: recommendable!

An article by Frankfurt-Tipp