DanJaeger This movie is not like Heat - and then it is somehow. A very nice tangled and twisted story, where not until the last scenes the story and plot is unvieled. Sit back and enjoy!

Ed-Shullivan Maybe if I had shut the film off of my Blu Ray player after the first 10 minutes of the snap and crackle Marauders provided I may have been able to convince myself and Mrs. Shullivan that this is such an action filled film with a great in depth plot that we should just savor the first 10 minutes. We could have then maybe, just maybe "assumed" that the rest of the film was just as suspenseful and intriguing that we would get too over excited if we continued to watch anymore.But ohhhhhh noooooo, just like most avid film goers we wanted to see more and more action filled scenes with a great suspenseful plot. That was our big mistake. Have you ever invested in any expensive fireworks such as The Jesters Revenge or the cheaper holiday firework staple such as the Burning Schoolhouse, proceeded to light the wick with anticipation of a burst of flame and color only to see the wick flare up with nothing but five (5) seconds of smoke and a dull Pffffft sound? Well that is how Mrs Shullivan and I felt the film Marauders let us down.There was such a convoluted plot that it reminded me more of the classic comedy skit by Bud Abbott and Lou Costello titled "Whose On First?" Each time a bank robbery occurred, or there was a flashback scene to the war where the U.S. special ops force were under heavy artillery gunfire we were fed another bit of a different plot line.Oh but film director Steven C. Miller saved the worse scenes for the films ending. Mrs Shullivan and I just looked at each other and said simultaneously "Well that was a confusing waste of time that I will never watch again."My advice to both film stars Bruce Willis and Christopher Meloni would be for "Brucie Boy" to stick to making another sixth sequel to the Die Hard franchise, and for Christopher Meloni to go back with his tail between his legs and rejoin the cast of Law and Order: Special Victims Unit because that TV series has went so far downhill after his departure. There was no chemistry at all between Willis and Meloni and the ending went out with a wimper and no bang. Even the macho charisma of Dave Bautista could not save this film from stinking badly. I give the film a poor rating of 3 out of 10. It is not worth watching at all.

Argemaluco The premise of Marauders is too stale, and that's worsened by redundant characters, a story with no rhyme or reason and dialogues which consist of tedious arguments with multiple variations of the "F" word, because the characters are laughably tough. I have to clear out the rude language isn't the real problem, but just a symptom of the lack of imagination of the screenplay. Despite so many arguments and violent clashes between the huge egos of the characters, Marauders goes by with an unbearable slowness, revealing obvious "secrets" which don't draw the attention or form a coherent story. What is more, the performances from Christopher Meloni, Bruce Willis, Adrian Grenier and Dave Bautista feel poor and listless. Regarding the women, they are relegated absolutely generic roles; among them: policewoman with a horsetail; sick wife; and blonde reporter. As regards the action scenes, they lack any excitement or emotional context to bring them dramatic relevance. In summary, Marauders is a horrible movie, and an absolute waste of time.

ronnietg The Hero of the story is a man whose wife was murdered while doing a "bust" (she was a cop). His Goal in the story is to find the people who are doing bank jobs, where people have been "executed" - It appears, therefore, that the heists are "personal." The first pages of the script get off to a rip-roaring start with the genre that audiences have come to see: Thriller/Action/Crime. The Story World is film noir/dark/intense/ sophisticated/tense. What happens after the first 10 pages is a mess of a script for the following reasons: First, the form of the story is branching, as opposed to linear. IE. We are taken to at least 3 or 4 scenes of a cop with a wife who is dying of cancer. For a t.v. serial, we could delve into this sub-plot, but for a thriller, it slows the pace down and takes the audience totally off-track; one scene would have been enough. The F.B.I. Hero goes to visit a man in prison - This is connected to how his wife was murdered. Again, we are taken on another branch that deviates from the Hero's Goal. This scene should have been edited out. The use of flashback to actually "tell" the story is a no-no in script writing. We are AGAIN taken off track by going back instead of forward. For this genre, it was a big mistake to show many scenes of military actions to sum up a character's back story. Big problem is also this: The Main Opponent needs to block obsessively whatever the Hero is attempting to achieve. There should be a punch-counter-punch between Hero and Opponent: There is none. As a result, the Opponent seems lethargic; his lines are ridiculous; he is basically in one or two locations just standing around with "filler dialogue," totally unbelievable. WHY is he the Opponent of the Hero?? What is the motivation of this Opponent? What is HIS Goal? Why? None of these questions are answered because of the following reason: The PLOT was heavy with disconnected, disjointed turns and branches. The Opponent was "inserted" into the Plot as if he were a toy doll that needed to fulfill a script requirement. The writer did not take the time to give this character a 3D persona. It's a shame that the script didn't deliver for this exciting story idea or High Concept Premise. It got muddled and caught in a web of plot branches that should never have been there. The audience was confused by all the machinations. For a t.v. series, this plot heavy story would have satisfied 24 separate episodes. But for a feature film of Thriller/Action/Crime, the Plot turns took the audience off the Narrative Drive of the story and was confusing as well. Christopher Meloni was superb as the Hero. He's been so typecast for so long - He could be another Robert DE Niro if he'd get the parts with the depth he's capable of playing. Bruce Willis in this story was how it got produced. But unfortunately, his role was weak; dialogue ridiculous; character development written with no real character arc. The actor miscast was the F.B.I. agent, who was a special forces guy- The actor was skinny; kind of runt-like; so not like a guy who has to be in top shape. He did the best he could with the dialogue, but the part was just not for him. The Hero's sidekick "wrestler" played his part with some sense of humor - More humor in this type of genre would have been great, had it been written into the script. The Hero could have had a dry sense of cynicism and world-weary, wise-cracking type of personality. It would have made for a much more tense Narrative Drive. Again, the actors did the best they could with a script that lacked key ingredients. Really a shame.