Once Upon a Time in Venice (2017)

Elevator Pitch: It is Venice Beach, a suburb of LA, where Steve, a PI with a past, tries to make a living preventing the Venice version of Banksy painting offensive pictures on the walls of his client’s houses. He also has to do jobs for a gang leader who had stolen his neice’s dog, and despite his efforts he never quite seems to rescue the mutt. Eventually he has to kick ass with the help of his best friend a depressed surf shop owner.

Content: There is a bit of sex and nudity, both female and male, as well as pornographic pictures on the apartment walls. There are a variety of scenes involving the gang leader, a money lender, Steve’s friend being depressed and more. During the investigations Steve has to interact with a lot of Venice low life, and there is an assistant who seems to be doing better than him in the detection stakes, and also provides some narration.

A View: This was generally panned by the critics, Bruce Willis being singled out for their disapproval, but he was not the only problem. I felt that maybe there had been scenes cut from the final version, resulting in not so much “plot holes” more plot gaps. This writer/director duo were also responsible for the diabolical “Cop Out”, one of the few films achieving the “Don’t’ See”  category on this site. This is not quite as bad, but still probably not worth your time.

Additional Info: No-one is telling us how much it cost, but no matter how little, it is unlikely to have made its money back.