Monolith

“I’ve kind of had a Forrest Gump career. I’ve been at the right place at the wrong time.”
– Bill Paxton

Things I learned from watching Monolith:

  1. People can outrun cars.
  2. It takes about the same amount of time to climb twenty flights of stairs as it does to ride up those same twenty flights in an elevator.
  3. People can survive bomb explosions and fires by jumping into swimming pools.

Movie physics aside, Monolith is a fairly predictable scifi thriller, filled with government conspiracies, alien body snatchers, and lots of explosions and car chases. Vaguely reminiscent of the (much better) The Hidden, with touches of The X-Files and pretty much every buddy cop movie to come down the pike, Monolith is just earnest and offbeat enough to have its own modest appeal.

Bill is Tucker, the Embittered Loner Cop, who naturally finds himself reluctantly partnered with the Feisty Female Cop. They trade insults, gradually come to trust each other, and, well, you know the rest. Tucker’s your basic rough-around-the-edges good guy, occasionally irritating but with a big heart.


Courtesy of a gratuitous, but much appreciated, shower scene. Bill’s in scruffy, leather-n-denim, good-ol’-boy mode here, complete with some nice fake scars and tattoos. He gets plenty of eminently watchable screen time, some good lines, a few bruises, and of course, the nude scene. It’s not exactly a groundbreaking role, but as always, he’s fun to watch.

Any movie with naked Bill gets at least two stars. Wet naked Bill gets two and a half.

Dead or Alive?