The Doorman ***½ (out of 5) (R) This action drama is a solid bet for fans of the Die Hard series, and its numerous imitators. Ruby Rose is perfectly cast as Ali - an ex-special forces soldier with PTSD that limits her career options and ability to relate to others. She settles for the best job she can find - a doorman for a high-rise New York condo. The gig quickly becomes far more complicated than most doormen will ever encounter, as it must for there to be a movie for us to savor.
During a weekend when almost all the residents are out of the building for repairs and renovations, a crew of well-armed, highly-trained evildoers takes over. They’re looking for something highly valuable that one of the owners is supposed to have stashed there. When the objects of their quest prove elusive, the violence begins. Ruby’s Ali becomes the wild card factor, ala Bruce Willis’ John McClane and a slew of others, pitted against superior forces and heavy odds. Jean Reno plays the stone-cold head of the thieves with a chilling calm worthy of any James Bond villain.
The action is intense and well-paced by director Ryuhei Kitamura, who has a long resume of action flicks - particularly in sci-fi and horror. The bodies pile up in a satisfying variety of methods, including some cleverly fresh tactics. The R rating is solely for violence - and well-deserved. Rose is as attractive as other women who have taken such roles, and also looks more like she might actually have the protagonist’s lethal skill set than others. Without naming names, many of those choices were made for box-office appeal rather than for appearing to have the character’s toughness. Rose’s cat-and-mouse course of attacks, chipping away at the enemy forces, will keep viewers’ adrenaline pumping on the how of things, even though everyone knows where the story will take them. (10/9/20)