I’ve watched a few movies starring rap star Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson in the past few years. Some have been good, some mediocre. But his new direct to DVD film SETUP is one that you should look at the cover of and then rent something else. Forget that Bruce Willis and Ryan Phillipe are on the front, just pass it by.
Along with another friend, Jackson and Phillipe hold up a limo carrying a diamond merchant in broad daylight in the middle of a busy street. Everyone scatters and no one calls the police. Not only that there are no police in sight which seemed odd to me this being Detroit. Then again maybe Detroit is so bad off since there seem to be no police. Anyway, they rob the merchant and then drive off in a logo covered white van to the docks.
At the docks they are finally met by the money man there to get the goods. Except that this is when Phillipe pulls out his gun and shoots both his friends. Of course Jackson isn’t dead though. If he were this would be one short movie. Instead he gets away, finds help and sets out to find his traitorous friend.
Unfortunately the diamonds they heisted were owned by people not to be messed with. A hit man begins tracking down the thieves to get the merchandise back. At the same time they pulled off the heist without the approval of the local mob boss (Willis) who isn’t happy either. He meets with Jackson and orders him to help steal money from the Russians in order to clear his debt. He orders his man Petey (Randy Coutre) to go along.
Afterwards the man he sends with Jackson suggests they celebrate with some cocaine. They go to Jackson’s dealer friend who also has a slew of guns on display, one of which Petey twirls around and accidentally blows his brains out with. Rather than explain what happened, they toss the body in the trunk and Jackson starts to use some of the money to track down Phillipe.
Sound complicated? It gets worse. We also get to meet another character, Phillipe’s father (James Remar) who’s in jail. It turns out ***spoiler*** that Phillipe stole the money to pay off the warden to insure that his father never got killed while in jail. But that’s just not enough. A woman is involved in this whole thing as well and…well I won’t say who she ends up being other than to say the whole thing doesn’t hold up.
Willis does fine with the small role he has (10-20 minutes tops), Phillipe does fine except that in making films like this his chances of stardom slip away one movie at a time and Jackson proves that he’s much more suited for supporting roles than leading ones. His acting skills are limited at best and it seems that every movie has similar plots or situations.
The worst part of this film is the script. It jumps around from here to their, has enough plot holes to sink an ocean liner and features so many characters that you just don’t care about that you simply wish it would end soon. Why would Willis do a movie like this? My guess would be he either owed someone a favor or they just offered too much money for him to turn down. Let’s just hope he doesn’t offer this as a shining moment on his resume.
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