Butterfly On A Wheel – An Honest Review

The 2007 thriller was directed by Mike Barker and written by William Morrissey. It’s the story of married couple Neil ( Gerard Butler ) and Abby Randall ( Maria Bello ) whose daughter is abducted by psychopath Tom Ryan ( Pierce Brosnan ).

PLOT:

Minor Spoilers Ahead:

Neil and Abby are happily married couple. They have a young daughter ( 6? ), everything seems to be going well. So they’re out and about in their car and all of sudden psychopathic James Bond pops out of the back seat.

Tom makes the couple go through bonegritting tasks to save their daughter, whose being babysitted by Tom’s likely equally psyhcopathic lady friend. We don’t know his motive or what he’s trying to gain out of all this. All we know is that he has some vendetta against our married couple.

The first task; deposit all of their money from the bank and given it to Tom. Abby is surprisingly calm about the whole situation while Neil is scared out of his mind. He can hardly think straight, he has no idea what to do and he’s this close to popping. Abby comes back with the money, all neatly placed in a black briefcase that Brosnan probably had lying around from his James Bond days. So that’s it? He just wants money? Nope! He lights it on fire and throws the case out the window! Meaning he just wants to see them suffer! He wants to see the world burn! He wants some anarchy! Like a watered down version of Heath Ledger’s Joker.

The rest of the film compiles of Brosnan forcing Neil and Abby to do some other mundane tasks, which have no actual impact on the plot, they’re just there to make em’ suffer. With everything going on Neil and Abby’s relationship gets rocky. Both of them being completely unsure about their futures and their daughter’s well being. It’s clear Tom wants nothing more than to manipulate the couple against each other. To kill their marriage and their lives without actually killing the two.

As to not spoil the film, I’ll end things here. Though I will say there’s a twist ending!

CONCLUSION:

While not the most unique film, it never gets to bad, though it never gets that great either. I’d say out of the Brosnan films I’ve seen, it’s probably the worst one yet. Btw, if your looking for a good Brosnan performance; The Foreigner with Jackie Chan, trust me.

At the end of the day, there really isn’t that much to say about this film. It was neither good, nor bad. It didn’t try to jump over the known boundaries of acting or storytelling. It didn’t do anything special, but nothing bad either. 6/10.

-The Screenwriter

All photos are from Wikimedia Commons – https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page