THE BAKER
Starring: Ron Perlman, Emma Ho, Elias Koteas, Harvey Keitel, and Joel David Moore
Director: Jonathan Sobol
QUENTIN
When it comes to the popular unassuming-but-surly-old-man-with-a-special-set-of-skills-is-reluctantly-forced-out-of-retirement-with-a-child-in-tow-that-will-eventually-teach-him-how-to-love-again genre, you could do worse than The Baker, but you could also do much, much better. If you were a Sons of Anarchy fan, Ron Perlman brings enough Clay Morrow energy to the proceedings to make it watchable, but, at best, this is an airplane movie. Nothing is particularly well done, but nothing is offensively bad either. It exists, like many action thrillers like this do, just to keep the $5.99 DVD bargain bin stocked.
AMARÚ
Bad CGI usually doesn’t affect my film-watching experience, but with The Baker it’s… it’s not great, and neither is the movie. It isn’t bad, but such miscues don’t help a film that we’ve seen a million times before in other retired-bad-asses-seeking-revenge stories. It’s a shame because the pieces are there: an endearing relationship between the titular baker (Ron Perlman) and his granddaughter Delfi (Emma Ho), a more-than-serviceable supporting cast (Harvey Keitel, Elias Koteas, Joel David Moore), and a gritty tone. But the execution feels stale, with numerous lazy plot points that turn this satisfactory action thriller into something regrettably forgettable.
