Ironically, the earth-bound climax is the film’s least-grounded act.  As Lisa rushes to stop the hotel hit and save her father from a hit man of his own, her inexplicable decisions leave your mind screaming, “Why why why?!”  Aren’t there easier ways to deal with this than stealing idling vehicles and giving up on phone calls simply because your cell is dead?  Well of course there are, but none involve driving down a mercenary marksman through a wall, saving Daddy from near-peril, a cat-and-mouse “where’s the bad guy?” sequence or, basically, any scenario that allows Lisa to save the day.  Craven crafts these scenes extremely well, but it’s all so absurd (and the outcome so inevitable) that his cinematic flair is all for naught.

With its high-octane action, the hotel hit’s nature and scope causes the film’s initial premise to become moot.  The villains could’ve done their thing without Lisa’s help at a time of their choosing anywhere in a broad general area and they would’ve achieved their goal.  But no, they just had to complicate things.  They probably laughed manically the whole time they schemed, too.  Silly bad guys.

The violence is pretty tame for a Craven film, consisting mostly of bloodless physical violence or generic gunplay.  You’d probably see worse on an average episode of “CSI”.  The language is also minimal, although it does flaunt PG-13’s “one F-word” allowance about halfway through.  But for the most part, this will make for a fairly easy network-broadcast edit.

Jayma Mays adds some laughs as the adorably in-over-her-head hotel assistant, but respected character-actor Brian Cox (“Braveheart”) has the thankless role of Lisa’s unwitting father.  Oh, and for all you “Survivor” fans, “Australian Outback” hunk Colby Donaldson shows up as the chief of a security unit, but when he’s unconvincingly (and laughably) yelling simple lines like “Code Red! Code Red!” you realize good old Colb should just stick to peddling Schick Quatros on TV and leave it at that.

AUDIENCE:  Mature teenagers and up

OBJECTIONABLE CONTENT: 

• Drugs/Alcohol Content:  Mixed drinks at an airport bar.
• Language/Profanity:  Two “A” words, one “F” word, and a handful of “S” words.
• Sexual Content/Nudity:  None.  Brief and inoffensive flirting.
• Violence:  Sporadic, generic, and not graphic.  Physical violence (hitting, choking, pushing, etc.).  Two people get shot.  One person is hit by a car.  An explosion occurs in a building.  A man is stabbed in the neck with a pen (skillful edits avoid penetration and blood).  Mostly consists of suspense from fearful manipulation and circumstances.