“I’ll freeze in hell before I help you!”

Justin’s rating: I promise you that when my hair goes that bad, I’m just shaving it all

Justin’s review: Let’s say that it’s been a long week and you’re in the mood for some hard-hitting, pulse-pounding movies to fill out the weekend. But it’s also been a week where you’ve cheated on your spouse, your diet, and your taxes, so you know you don’t deserve anything good. The best solution for some self-flagellation is to stock up on Director David Giancola’s off-brand action weirdness. Your checkout cart should be filled with Icebreaker, Time Chasers, and — why not? — Pressure Point.

Meet Sebastian “Della” Dellacourt (Don Mogavero), a man who this movie wants to convince you is the “CIA’s best assassin” but visual evidence can only convince you as much as “CIA’s third-best Starbucks barista.”

It’s not just Della’s wildly distracting balding hairline (which the movie goes out of its way to shove into your face), it’s that he’s so mild-mannered and milquetoast that you can easily envision a pretty even fight between him and a sleepy chinchilla. Every time Della is in a fight or action scene, the natural reaction of the viewer is to call out in concern, “Are you OK? Can I call someone to come get you?”

In a revelation that will certainly not shock you, Dellacourt is also the lead writer of Pressure Point. Aha! Now the pieces are falling into place in your head, aren’t they? Now you’re nodding with understanding why such a mismanaged casting call could result in this slab of human flesh getting top billing.

Anyway, Della intentionally flubs a mission to save some kids and ends up being divorced and thrown into prison by the least understanding people ever. His only chance of redemption is to take One Last Job from his old handler Neil (played by M*A*S*H’s Larry Linville, prompting a “Oh, this is what happened to Frank” from the audience).

The ambling action moseys its way to Vermont, where a bad guy is up to bad things with the help of bad boys. Fortunately, the CIA’s best assassin makes besties with the local sheriff and gets a job at the bad guy’s… something… company to investigate. There he uncovers the shocking truth: The bad guy has a plan to blow up congress. How does Della find this out? Is it the result of hours of painstaking investigation? No, it’s because the bad guy inexplicably took the time to create a cute little computer animation of this upcoming crime and put it on his work desktop. Hey, sometimes you have to kick the plot along.

And boy does this plot need kicking, because Pressure Point is such an aimless product that’s undermined by lame acting, a sappy soundtrack, and an inexplicable hatred of apples. You’d hope that our protagonist would be up to the challenge of saving congress, but those hopes dim quickly, let me tell you. Della’s whole thing as the “CIA’s best assassin’ is constantly being arrested, blown up, and ticking off even greater numbers of law enforcement officers who instantly identify him. You won’t be surprised that the finale is him getting bodily tackled by about 15 cops in front of a car bomb he’s trying to stop.

You could make fun of Pressure Point, to be sure, but there’s no skill in it. Maybe it would be more appropriate to use it as a cautionary tale that the American Dream does not ensure that all aspiring filmmakers will become the next Scorsese or Spielberg.

Intermission!

• Yes, let’s stare at his balding head even more
• That’s a pretty lame extra car
• Just drop that bomb into my newspaper here
• You can walk into any place and instantly become a chef
• “Make your last wish.”
• You can outrun snowmobiles and a helicopter on foot
• Get mad in prison? Have a one-person pillow fight in your cell!
• No prison actually checks stuffed animals for cutting lasers
• That prison jumpsuit is about six sizes too big for Della
• An escaped prisoner trying to stay on the down low will resort to throwing hot coffee on local bullies and then smacking them down with a six-pack
• The dog barking into his uncaring face
• All action heroes wear sweaters on the job!
• All action villains create cute computer animations of their future crimes
• All action guards have AK-47s
• The microwave bomb and the ensuing jump-through-fake-window
• This is the longest back-and-forth one-upmanship between the good and bad guy
• All shootouts should have incredibly sad soap opera music playing
• He HATES apples. This is an important plot point.
• Flying a stolen helicopter into Washington D.C. airspace will certainly not get you shot down
• That sheriff is going to jail forever
• All the cops left so Della could sadly jog away
• He wants retribution, not revenge. Big difference.
• The little wave as he parachutes away from the exploding plane