One of the four beasts saying: "Come and see." and I saw and behold, a white horse, and he that sat on him had a bow: and there was given to him a crown, and he departed as conqueror and to conquest. So do you want to “come and see” this film or not?
Detective Aidan Breslin (Dennis Quaid) is a burnt out detective who is having trouble raising his two sons, Alex (Lou Taylor Pucci) and the younger Sean (Liam James). He is constantly called into work and usually drops a $20 on the boys to get them by and is out the door.
Breslin’s wife died and he’s never come to terms with it and buries himself in his work to alleviate the pain, yet it’s distancing his sons in the process.
Breslin’s specialty is forensic orthodontry, so when a strange tableau with “come and see” written around it is discovered he’s called in on the case with his partner Stringray (Clifton Collins, Jr.).
The following day brings another body with a similar M.O. and they’re brought to the home of Mr. Spitz (Peter Stormare) and his adopted daughter Kristen (Zhang Ziyi). The case proceeds as he discovers that the killers are using the four horsemen of the apocalypse, War, Famine, Pestilence, and Death, to carry out their crimes.
I really must watch too many movies since I was able to figure out what was going on early on. Dennis Quaid is properly gruff and grizzled as the detective who is dead inside, the story involving angle involving the Four Horsemen does have a nice ring to it, but the film really fails to do anything memorable with it.
It’s not good when you’re yelling instructions to the screen and the characters don’t seem to catch the obvious and go in that direction. For example, one of the characters is killed but it doesn’t follow the pattern established by the other killings.
Our detectives don’t seem to catch on to that until the plot dictates that they should. Seemed obvious to me when they come upon the crime scene.
I also caught on to the final reveal that’s supposed to come as a big surprise at the end. On the other hand, I wondered if it was going to go another way to throw you off, but it was as I thought it would be. The film takes some interesting ideas, but does nothing useful with them.
I thought the Four Horsemen angle had a certain majesty to it (the King James can sound downright Shakespearian). Alack and alas, a good movie it did not turn out to be.
Clifton Collins Jr., in a fright moustache, is wasted and Zhang Ziyi didn’t convince me with her role (to say more might be spoilage). The open ending also left me wanting. Simply put, Horsemen is a good idea done wrong.
Horsemen is presented in anamorphic widescreen (1.78:1) and is enhanced for 16x9 televisions. Special features include a commentary by director Jonas Akerlund and director of photography Eric Broms. There are also 11 minutes of deleted scenes and previews of other Lionsgate DVDs.
Horsemen starts off interesting but stumbles towards the end and has to be put down. I liked the biblical aspect and the idea of the four horsemen, but the reveal wasn’t very revealing and some miscasting (Ziyi) made it a lesser effort. Stop this horse I want to get off.
Horsemen is now available at Amazon . As of yet, there is not a release date for the UK. Visit the DVD database for more information.
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