Cosmic Sin

March 8th, 2021

MOVIE: COSMIC SIN

STARRING: FRANK GRILLO, BRUCE WILLIS, PERREY REEVES, COSTAS MANDYLOR

AMovieGuy.com’s RATING: ½ STAR (Out of 4)

Writing my review for Cosmic Sin is quite the conundrum. It was not till after my interview with director/writer Edward Drake where the details behind the making of this movie explained exactly why it was so bad. With only nine days of shooting and Luke Wilson on his way to start filming, the global pandemic hit, shutting down the world, and the production of Cosmic Sin. That’s an important detail that audiences will not be aware of when watching this direct to VOD science fiction adventure. That’s not to say that Cosmic Sin would not still be bad, but Drake was saddled with attempting to make lemonade with rotten lemons, and although the effort is valiant, we would have all been better off if the footage was just left on someone’s hard drive in Hollywood. Cosmic Sin is extremely bad, barely a movie, where the sets look cobbled together from old furniture, cheap special effects, and non-existent characters. The best thing to do with Cosmic Sin is to shoot every copy of it off into space and pretend it never happened.

The potential of Cosmic Sin seems to rest on the names of Frank Grillo and Bruce Willis, actors that were ready to make a check and go home, which is exactly what they did here. The plot is the bare minimum of sci-fi garble, where the setting is the far distant future, where wars have destroyed civilization, leaving humanity on the brink of extinction, but technology still allows us to inhabit other planets. On a space station somewhere, a pair of scientists make contact with an alien race, and when the aliens infiltrate the humans, it’s up to a group of seven rogue space agents to stop them before intergalactic war breaks out.

In the beginning, Cosmic Sin seems headed in a direction of the heroes fighting off possessed human-aliens for the entire runtime. Then it moves onto Willis’ rebel agent James Ford, Grillo’s leader General Ryle, Dr. Lea Goss (Perrey Reeves), and hot headed general Marcus Bleck (Costas Mandylor) debating the next point of attack at a conference table. The decision is to bring the fight to the aliens, so they space fly to another planet where they fight in the forest with lame costumed creatures. That’s more or less the gist of it all, as Cosmic Sin does not take the time to develop a single character, nor fully explain anything that is going on. This is what I imagined it would look like if Bruce Willis gathered his buddies together to make a movie on the fly, because that’s what it is.

There’s also a sad collection of narratives taking place behind the scenes with Cosmic Sin. On one hand, you have a hard working director in Edward Drake, proving he can make miracles happen for a production company that green-lit a movie. The majority of Cosmic Sin is incoherent and looks like segments of different movies cut and pasted together. There’s even a scene in the forest where we can see onlookers in non-space clothes just watching the actors play pretend. And then there’s the other sad reality that Bruce Willis puts his name on these projects and could care less how good or bad it looks. Unlike Grillo, or really the rest of the cast that is at least giving their all, it’s Bruce Willis that is the worst part. His performance is not just lazy, but if it were on his terms, his preference would be to just stand there and do nothing.

It’s honestly pointless for me to continue to beat down a movie as awful as Cosmic Sin. This is not so much of a movie, but more of a casualty of the pandemic on the business of Hollywood. You might even wonder why I would give Cosmic Sin a half star instead of a zero and the answer is that Edward Drake is a director that deserves better than this. He made something out of nothing and hopefully his professional approach leads to more opportunities. As for Bruce Willis, if he’s going to keep putting out efforts like this, I say it’s time for his acting career to die hard.

COSMIC SIN IS PLAYING IN SELECT THEATERS AND AVAILABLE ON DEMAND MARCH 12TH

½ STAR

Written by: Leo Brady
leo@amovieguy.com

Leo Brady