Detective Knight: Rogue (2022)

2 Stars (out of 4)

Knight Moves

By Jeffrey M. Anderson

Certainly one of the better of the recent, low-budget Bruce Willis action movies, Detective Knight: Rogue still suffers from confusing bits, as well as an uncomfortable vacancy where its star ought to have been.

Los Angeles detective James Knight (Bruce Willis) and his partner Fitzgerald (Lochlyn Munro) investigate a robbery, and in the aftermath, Fitzgerald is shot and wounded. As Knight and fellow officer Godwin Sango (Jimmy Jean-Louis) follow a lead to New York, the robbers — all disgraced former pro athletes, Corey Rhodes (Beau Mirchoff), Mercer (Corey Large), Sykes (Keeya Keeyes), and Mike Rochester (Trevor Gretzky) — divide up their earnings.

Corey meets with their handler, Winna (Michael Eklund), a wealthy scoundrel who provides a private plane to get the robbers to and from their jobs. He has a new job for them: to steal a valuable Wayne Gretzky rookie card. Unfortunately, the job does not go as planned, but there's a wild card yet to be played: a secret connection between Winna and Detective Knight.

Coming from director and co-writer Edward Drake, whose previous credits with Willis include the atrocious Cosmic Sin, Detective Knight: Rogue clearly had more effort put into it. The story is decently constructed, with enough twists and turns to keep the sturdy, interesting characters moving through it with a semblance of logic. The team of robbers consisting of pro athletes who were, for one reason or another, banned from their respective sports, is a good idea; society has no use for them, and they feel they have no choice. (One of them, Mike, is played by the son of Wayne Gretzky, whose face graces the million-dollar sports card they are tasked to steal.)

The characters are also designed to create a buffer around Willis, who in real life suffers from aphasia. He's the title character here, but it's the others who more or less keep the plot moving. (The movie is reportedly the first of a trilogy, with Willis returning as Knight in two more movies.) This is especially true of the Detective Sango character, who is deeply sympathetic, interacts easily with Willis, and also provides welcome diversity (the actor Jimmy Jean-Louis is from Haiti).

Additionally, Drake seems to have had more time to craft scenes around his star, rather than putting him at the center, and things here flow more naturally than in his earlier movies. Even so, certain scenes in Detective Knight: Rogue — such as a flashback to a man being shot and killed in front of a screaming toddler, or a man allowing himself to be killed by police — are baffling. And, given Willis's unfortunate condition, it is ultimately too difficult to let go and have a good time.