The Spider

CinemaSerf 3/28/2023 10:20:27AM 8.4

Yikes but this is a log old slog. It all centres around the rather dashing "Adam" (Dhafer L'Abidine) who takes over his father's lucrative drugs business and then has to stay one step ahead of the authorities; of his not entirely trustworthy family - including his dipso wife - and of his rivals in the battle to get his new and very potent drugs to market - all whilst the eponymous gentleman (with his own set of acrobatic spidey-skills) is trying to bring him and his empire crashing down. It's all very routine, this, and though the production has clearly had money to spend it has not gone on the acting talent nor on writing a story that we haven't seen a dozen times with Jason Statham or even Bruce Willis. It's brutal and violent - to a degree - but plays the cards of familial loyalty and betrayal with a disappointing degree of predictability. Plenty of pyrotechnics and shoot 'em ups, to be fair, but this could have been so much better had the director and writers just tried to be even slightly original and less formulaic.