User Reviews

IN A NUTSHELL: The low-budget cyber-thriller is directed and produced by James Cullen Bressack. The movie is based on a story by Leon Langford and Collin Watts.

THINGS I LIKED: Mel Gibson's involvement in this movie is why most people will be intrigued. He's always a pleasant addition, and he certainly elevates the stature of this movie. I've been a fan for years. He even has some funny lines in the movie to add some comic relief.

Other cast members include Kevin Dillon, Michael Welch, Sam Asghari, and Eddie Steeples. I really enjoyed seeing Shannen Doherty too, especially since she has been going through cancer treatments. I thought she did a good, believable job, and I wish her health and happiness.

I've always liked single-location movies.

Fun fact #1: They shot the movie in only 7 days.

Fun fact #2: Kevin Dillon admits he's terrible with computers and that they had an IT expert on set who was available to answer questions.

It's hard to think watching a man typing on a computer frantically would actually be interesting or cause enough tension and suspense, but it works well at times.

Sleight of hand is mentioned early in the story and then demonstrated in several ways in the plot. The plot features a mystery of who the bad guy is.

THINGS I DIDN'T LIKE: Unfortunately, the movie doesn't fully utilize the talented Mel Gibson. Like Bruce Willis and Liam Neeson, I worry that more and more of these movie stars who were hot in the 80's, and '90s are now just cashing their name in for small roles in mediocre movies.

There are quite a few bad acting moments. Most of that can be contributed to a cliched script.

The granny voice sounded like a cartoon voice.

A lot of details are wrong or missing.

People's reactions to events seem off. For example, if you were on a morning jog and saw a bomb go off near your neighborhood, would you just shrug and keep going? Would you still go to work if it were your day off and your daughter's birthday? There didn't seem to be urgency for him to actually be in the office.

Very little character development.

TIPS FOR PARENTS: Profanity, including F-bombs Some bloody violence Weapons of various kinds Explosions People die.

THEMES: Family Workplace honesty Computer hacking skills Co-workers

You can see the full review on my Movie Review Mom YouTube channel.

I don't think this movie was intended to be a comedy, but it is certainly laughable. Low budget, bad edits, goofy dialog, and the most cheesy one-liners I've heard in a while. I had to keep watching to see how bad it could get.

Even with his resume full of filmmaking experience, director James Cullen Bressack still keeps giving us amateur C grade boring films. Once again he failed to direct his cast properly, especially Doherty. Only Gibson and Dillon (barely) held their own without cast direction. Then Bressack just kept giving us long dragged out and mostly unnecessary scenes. The writing by Leon Langford and Collin Watts was cliched, stale, inept, predictable and boring, especially making the normally comfortable 99 min film feel much longer with the slow pacing and constant computer screen garble. Don't get me started on the plot and technical issues that riddled this mess. You will lose your patience waiting for the ending credits that offer zero reward. It's a very generous 4/10 from me, mostly for the pity that Dillion and Gibson had to endure to get through this one.

I give this film 2 stars for getting enough money or blackmail to compel some name actors into doing this film. I wonder if Britney Spears paid so she could cast her boyfriend, now husband, in this film. As someone else says, he laughingly acts his ass off, showing how much "chops" he has as an actor so he can be the most memorable, useless character of all with just a few minutes screen time. A dull tool.

That about explains this movie about a hacker, which has a story that couldn't even be sold 20 years ago to seniors who know almost nothing about computers and hacking. I couldn't stop laughing when Mel Gibson tries to sell something about a "DOS attack" as if it mmakes much sense in the context of this loser. Kevin Dillon, who has done some decent work, is given the hopeless task of carrying this film along with Gibson, who comes in from time to time to provide the cop shtick and he does what he can to try to sound credible. It works about half the time, the rest he's almost dialed in, brain gain. Shannon Doherty barely shows, barks orders like the police captain she is, perhaps just trying to remain relevant in film while she has unfortunately gone through her own health hell.

In the end, the villain is a laughable, non-stop babbling buffoon. If you're not watching this on a streaming where you can skip parts, you'll be in constant pain as there is little reason to want to stay for the journey since it's completely unconvincing. This is "bad Bruce Willis movie" level bad. Perhaps they needed the money. Owed a favor. I don't know but those must have been some really awful pictures the director and writers must have on the stars in this film.

Sitting down to watch the 2022 thriller "Hot Seat" from writers Leon Langford and Collin Watts, I must admit that I wasn't really harboring much of any high expectations for the movie. Sure, I thought that there could be some worth to the movie, as it had Mel Gibson and Kevin Dillon on the cast list, but the synopsis just wasn't sounding all that interesting. But alas, I opted to watch the movie and see what director James Cullen Bressack had to offer with "Hot Seat".

Sure, the movie was watchable, although it wasn't by any means an outstanding thriller. The storyline was adequate enough, though it offers nothing really that haven't been done or seen before, and thus the movie is suitable only for a single viewing. And the storyline was a tad too predictable and generic for my liking.

The acting performances in "Hot Seat" were adequate. I mean, Kevin Dillon did an okay job in the leading role, though I had expected it to be Mel Gibson in the lead, as he is a more established actor and have bigger movie titles to his name. The movie also had Eddie Steeples and Shannen Doherty on the cast list, though in minor support roles only. It was a shame really that Eddie Steeples wasn't given more time on the screen.

If you are an avid fan of the thriller genre, then you might get a bigger kick out of "Hot Seat" than I did.

My rating of "Hot Seat" lands on a five out of ten stars.

What amateur movie, i don't recommend this movie to anyone, no good lines, no good story, no good Cinematography, i mean even YouTube content creators can do better, what make it worst is that they have big actors.

What a joke.

You would think a film with Mel Gibson in it would be up there somewhere in the ratings, but this film was just not that great.

I watched it because Gibson was in it and I am sure many others will to. I wonder sometimes if big names lend themselves to lower end films to help them out. It got me to watch it, so I guess it worked.

Some of the acting was bad. The plot was ok, I guess. Best way to describe it... low budget film that lives up to every expectation of a low budget film. I try hard not to low ball ratings, but you just can't up mark this from a 3/10. If you're the kind of person who can watch anything (like me), then give it a go. If you're a hard to please film watcher, give it a miss.

Why Mel Gibson took part in this film at all is beyond me. The movie has a lot of flaws and is bad. I laughed several times when I shouldn't have, and when I should have, I didn't. That says a lot. It's a shame because the movie could have been much, much better, it has potential considering the plot.

Acting bad... even worse than Bruce Willis and Nicolas Cage...

Script was a load of garbage and a totally unreal plot that could never happen...

And where did they get the girl from? Oh yea, and that dumb-looking, low IQ gung-ho cop!!!???

Can't believe I watched it to the end? Feel bad about it and even after 3 days, I can't get over having watched it so... perhaps I'm getting some sort of closure by reviewing it and saving some other poor soul from watching it!

Even 3.8 stars average is too high for this trash, so I will bring the average down with my one-star.

Movies like these are meant to be made as a gag, shown once to your close circle of enemies, and then the movie project deleted from your computer. Why waste thousands of hours of people's time with such trash??? Even YT has better content these days...

If you want to die a slow and painful death, watch this movie.

Sam Asghari, a complete nobody, acts so hard that it's no wonder after 6 years of being linked to the legendary Britney Spears he's still a nobody. Buddy, give it up. You're not cut to be an actor. You suck the life out of every film or TV show you're in.

I won't sugar coat: the reviews on Hot Seat -- as well as most of the films under the prolific Emmett/Furla/Oasis Films (EFO Films) shingle -- aren't great. Why? Because, such as the somewhat similar films made by James Cullen Bressack's likeminded brethren Steven C. Miller (Arsenal, Line of Duty, First Kill, Precious Cargo; a few -- if not all -- under the Oasis EFO banner), push the limits of Die Hard, Lethal Weapon and Speed inspired-credulity? I say: screw credibility. Enjoy the retro-'80s/'90s action ride of the home video-era. Relish the smarmy-cheesy one-liners, the over-the-top gun battles, the car explosions, etc.

Yes, you've seen a few of prolific producer Randall Emmett's 118-and-climbing resume (his longstanding co-producer is George Furla) in stateside theaters with Bruce Willis's 16 Blocks (2006), Nicolas Cage's The Wicker Man (2006), Al Pacino's 88 Minutes (2007), Jake Gyllenhall's End of Watch (2012), and Sylvester Stallone's Escape Plan (2013) and Escape Plan: The Extractors (2019). The rest of Emmett's films, since -- as with Hot Seat -- make their stateside debuts as direct-to-DVDs; in today's digital clouds: they're free-with ads streaming and Smart TV debuts that also appear as theatricals in the overseas Eurasian markets. (One Oasis flick to call out: Heist (2015) with a cast featuring Robert De Niro, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, and a holding-his-own Mark-Paul Gosselaar from Precious Cargo.)

Okay, now for James Cullen Bressack's Hot Seat.

Bressack, by the way, got his first, wide-spread notice with 2013's to Jennifer; he shot it entirely on an iPhone 5 -- and it's noted as the first commercially-released SOP film. Bressack then moved up the ranks to direct Steven Seagal in Beyond the Law (2019).

How the Oasis shingle produces films: they get an actor under contract to make not one, but a couple of films (Kevin's other Oasis film on my watch list is Wire Room (2022) with Bruce Willis). In this case, Kevin Dillon and Mel Gibson, returned from Hot Seat to make the radio station-based thriller, On the Line. In that latter film: Mel stars and Kevin co-stars. Here, Kevin is in leading-man position as Mel (like so many of the Bruce Willis films of late under the Oasis banner), well, Mel may be on the box "starring," but he's not here that much -- but for the minimal screen time: Mel delivers the goods. The third in-line (all of these Oasis film have one; usually female) is cancer survivor Shannon Doherty, cast-against-type as a grizzled FBI agent.

The "hot seat" here, is literal: Kevin's trying-to-rehabilitate ex-computer hacking legend known as "The Red Knight" is the victim of a mad bomber that's strapped a device under Kevin's computer help desk/tech support work chair. The goal: force Kevin to hack into a financial institution so the bomber can recoup his dead-by-suicide father's wealth stolen by Kevin's world-infamous hack.

If you're looking for "new" movies to watch with 2020 to 2023 dates on them, you'll stream decent entertainment from an Oasis-made flick. (I wrote official reviews for Arsenal, Line of Duty, First Kill, Precious Cargo over at B&S About Movies linked on the IMDb, if you'd like to know more about those films; there's more to learn about the Jennifer franchise with my B&S review for 2020's For Jennifer.)

Obviously, it is not as polished as the movie "Fortress 2021" and it does not have the softness of that movie, but this Bressack movie is a compressed and logical version of the series that seeks to add some apparent depth to the core of its superficial subject,.at the same time a Little or no effort has been made to sub-category characters. And we also needed more clues. Why doesn't the hero's wife show his message to the agents in the first encounter? If it seems very natural. Talking about perison was thinkable. And honestly I haven't seen such a performance from Mr Gibson in a long time. There's is really moments in the film that you want to continue . Contrary To some other parts. Not bad at all.( You can ad 1374 and 1579 to my username to access my Instagram accounts)

Although the story was not new it was not very predictable. The production was of low budget and was evident by the lesser known actors performances. However Kevin ,Mel, Shannen & Eddie's acting chops was enough to keep me entertained for most of the show.

I am sure the entourage will agree that Johnny Drama did good.

Interesting plot of the film, it is tense. The acting is quite cold and theatrical, but ok, it's not that bad, unlike the others, Mel G. Did it superbly as always. The story is tense and interesting in parts, the recording and sound are nothing special, let's say it's a passing grade. Some characters (secondary characters) are quite generic, so it's not fun at all. The action is actually interesting and does not go too fast or too slow, it just goes as it should. My overall impression is that I am actually negatively surprised because when Mel Gibson is in the movie, I expect much more from the movie. All in all this is just a mediocre time killer.

I love and adore Shannen Doherty and she's a wonderful actress. Too bad for her because the movie was awful.

Some of the cast had a harder time acting and they weren't really that believable... specifically the guy who played Seargant Tobias. As someone else says, it was an unintentional comedy in my opinion. If that's what you like, maybe you'll enjoy it.

Nice try though..

The acting is so bad The dialogue is terrible The hacking and computer terms are wrong

Even the story is very shallow

It could be executed way better Total waste of time.