Friday Flicks: What’s the Word on The Words?

TIME breaks down which films to see and which to avoid this weekend.

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The Words

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Tagline: There’s more than one way to take a life.

Considering that there often seems to be more interest in the notion of the Great American Novel – words that must always be capitalized – than in the actual novel itself, it was probably inevitable that a movie would be made about the same subject?

And so we find ourselves confronted with The Words, in which young author Rory Jansen (Bradley Cooper) is being lauded for a Great American Novel that he didn’t actually write. Rory found a manuscript in an old briefcase while in Paris on honeymoon with his wife Dora (Zoe Saldana) – which just goes to show that visiting the Eiffel Tower and checking out the Mona Lisa aren’t the only activities in town. Naturally, there will be a price to pay for the lie, and lessons will surely be doled out and duly digested.

But will The Words curry favor with the critics? Not exactly. The word is out, and it isn’t encouraging. “A literary film that stands to work best for those who don’t read,” slams Variety. “An appealing cast, top flight technical aspects, and a storyline that agrees with its intended audience’s prejudices about the creative process could turn The Words into a minor hit. But as the major statements on art and life it yearns to be, chalk this one up as a failure,” notes Box Office.com. At least the writer-directors Brian Klugman and Lee Sternthal from Screen International take a backhanded approach: “A clever entertainment that segues from thriller to drama to romance without breaking a sweat or offering much depth.”

MORE: TIME Cover Story on Jonathan Franzen: Great American Novelist

The Cold Light of Day

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Tagline: Be Careful Who You Trust.

With its generic action-flick title, The Cold Light of Day sounds like the kind of movie which has been made countless times before (and sure enough, a quick glance at IMDb proves that statement to be somewhat correct). More worrisome for the folk responsible for this Henry Cavill/Bruce Willis/Sigourney Weaver action flick set in Spain is that the plot definitely resembles films of yore.

Cavill (the next Superman, lest we forget, in Summer 2013’s Man of Steeel) plays Will, who is not entirely happy about leaving his business blues behind in the U.S. to spend some quality time on the family boat, helmed by his moody father Martin (Bruce Willis). The pair don’t exactly see eye-to-eye – Will’s closest confidante, his BlackBerry, gets hurled in the water early on in. But considering that Martin is revealed to have been a supposedly loyal servant to the CIA for many years, you wouldn’t want to take him on, would you?

Amazingly, The Cold Light of Day and The Words both share the same improbable plot device: a mysterious briefcase. (We dare any other publication to come up with another way to link these two movies.) The bad guys kidnap Will’s mother and brother to get their hands on said case, which has come into Martin’s possession. To complicate matters  — and boy, do matters get complicated —  Martin’s boss (Weaver) is also interested in its contents. For reasons we won’t go into for fear of spoiling a potential weekend outing for you, Will is forced to take the lead and save both the proverbial day as well as his family. “I owe you an explanation,” Martin says to Will as the movie begins to unravel. Really? You’re telling us?

It’s hard to say anything positive about a film so filled with non sequiturs and clichés, though Weaver does her best to liven up every scene she appears in. It’s a genuine shame, though, that director Mabrouk El Mechri hasn’t been able to do for Bruce Willis what his JCVD did for Jean-Claude Van Damme (seriously: the Belgian actor talking to camera is worth the price of admission).

Like us, the critics have been sufficiently cold on this one. “It all boils down to a series of riotously extended showdowns between Cavill and Weaver, who’s phoning it in splendidly here,” concludes Time Out London. And Weaver gets further love from the Daily Telegraph in its otherwise one-star review: “The one thing that’s consistently fun to watch here is Weaver, whose prominent if surely rent-inspired role as a ruthless Terminator in pantsuits generates plenty of accidentally funny stuff.” But Total Film is less kind about Cavill, who is “watchable enough if hard to root for, he’s a curiously blank presence in a movie that wants us to invest in his survival.”

MORE: Superman Grows An Accent: Meet the New British Clark Kent

NewsFeed’s Flicks Pick: In a particularly bad week for cinema, The Words wins out as the least awful option.

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