Movies: U.S. Marshals

One of the great things about being home on vacation is goofing off during the day. Since I don't anticipate a whole lot of time for that once I start working, I figure it's best to enjoy such things now. Goofing off at Mom & Dad's has the added benefit of free HBO (well, it's "free" in that we're obliged to get it because of the HOA's deal with the cable company).

"U.S. Marshals" is one of those movies that's perfectly suited to wasting time. This semi-sequel to "The Fugitive" is aggressively forgettable, proactively generic, and intensely by-the-numbers. If you paid $6 to see this in a theater, you'd walk out not necessarily angry, not necessarily happy, but at least 2 hours older.

Tommy Lee Jones plays, well, Tommy Lee Jones, as he hunts down fugitive Wesley Snipes. Robert Downey Jr. takes a break from rehab to play alongside them, and Joe Pantoliano gets some great one-liners in as he always does. Missing from the superior first film is the tension of hunter and hunted - you seldom feel like Snipes' super special forces-trained fugitive (oops, spoiled something there...or not, since the plot is almost eye-rollingly predictable) is in any real danger of capture.

It's hard to make an action-thriller movie with little action and even less thrills, but somehow, "U.S. Marshals" fits the bill. The opening of the movie, with Tommy Lee Jones dressed in a chicken outfit, gets a 7/10 from me. The rest, however, gets a...

Rating: 6/10