Reach Me: Movie Review

In the past four decades, writer/director John Herzfeld has worked on quite a few projects. Only two of the features that he was responsible for are watchable. The 1983 entertainingly awful “Two of a Kind” that reunited “Grease” co-stars John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John. The other film I enjoyed was 1996’s “2 Days in the Valley’. Since then, Herzfeld gave us lame action-thrillers like “15 Minutes” and “Bobby Z”. Now he is back with the whacked out “Reach Me” that caught my interest mainly because of the weird mix of talent on screen.

When I tell you “Reach Me’ has a stand-out cast, I mean it. Seriously, this thing stars Thomas Jane (The Punisher), Lauren Cohan (The Walking Dead), Kevin Connolly (Entourage), Tom Sizemore (True Romance), Nelly (yeah, the rapper), Kelsey Grammer (Frasier), Terry Crews (The Expendables), Cary Elwes (The Princess Bride), Danny Aiello (The Professional), Danny Trejo (Machete), Kyra Sedgwick (The Closer), Elizabeth Henstridge (Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.) Tom Berenger (Major League), and Sylvester Stallone (Rocky). Seriously, who wouldn’t want to watch something that had all these people in it? Unfortunately “Reach Me” is one hell of a mess and there is not a single actor on screen that can make the material work.

“Reach Me” takes us back and forth through the lives of different people and how a motivational book written by an elusive author (Tom Berenger) has impacted their lives. I am not going to waste time going into how each character is effected by the book since you can tell by the cast, there are a lot. I will say that quite a few are pretty out there. Thomas Jane feels out of place as an L.A. cop who spends his days killing bad guys like he was a cowboy in the old west and then going to Church to confess his sins. A couple of hitmen read the book and decide they don’t want to kill people for their boss (Tom Sizemore) any more. Yep, the film is just as bad as it sounds.

I am sure curiosity will get people to stream this movie once it is on Netflix, but this is something nobody should run out and see in a theater. Thankfully due to its very limited release, it won’t be easy to find “Reach Me” at a theater near you.

By: Marc Ferman