The Doorman (2020)

(On Cable TV, August 2021) The spirit of Die Hard is strong in The Doorman, at least in the basics of the plot: A protagonist with action experience; an implausibly isolated building; villains out for a quick safe-cracking score and a family to protect. There’s clearly an effort here for this to be a Ruby Rose vehicle, especially given her well-regarded performances in other action films. Unfortunately, a vehicle is better when it’s based on a strong script and this isn’t it — sticking close to genre tropes, The Doorman goes from one non-surprise to another until the end but can’t manage any wit or originality. Director Ryuhei Kitamura does occasionally use a flashy trick or two, but little of those tricks actually amount to a cohesive vision for the film: they feel more like trick shots you do when you get bored more than in pursuing a specific artistic intention. Rose is not bad in the role — if the point of a star vehicle is to showcase the star, that’s more than met here. There’s some additional pleasure in seeing Jean Reno as the antagonist — once more renewing with Hollywood when it’s looking for a French heavy, even more so considering that Reno’s indeed getting heavier these days. The Doorman got stuck in the mad COVID-time rush to release everything to streaming platforms, but it’s doubtful that it would have earned anything more than a straight-to-digital release even in calmer times. It’s that generic, and it doesn’t really work even as a failed homage to better movies in the genre.