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IMDbPro

The Cold Light of Day

  • 2012
  • PG-13
  • 1h 33m
IMDb RATING
4.9/10
38K
YOUR RATING
POPULARITY
4,524
321
Sigourney Weaver, Bruce Willis, and Henry Cavill in The Cold Light of Day (2012)
A young American (Cavill) uncovers a conspiracy during his attempt to save his family, who were kidnapped while on vacation in Spain.
Play trailer2:09
3 Videos
67 Photos
ActionThriller

After his family is kidnapped during their sailing trip in Spain, a young Wall Street trader is confronted by the people responsible: intelligence agents looking to recover a mysterious brie... Read allAfter his family is kidnapped during their sailing trip in Spain, a young Wall Street trader is confronted by the people responsible: intelligence agents looking to recover a mysterious briefcase.After his family is kidnapped during their sailing trip in Spain, a young Wall Street trader is confronted by the people responsible: intelligence agents looking to recover a mysterious briefcase.

  • Director
    • Mabrouk El Mechri
  • Writers
    • Scott Wiper
    • John Petro
  • Stars
    • Henry Cavill
    • Bruce Willis
    • Sigourney Weaver
  • See production, box office & company info
  • IMDb RATING
    4.9/10
    38K
    YOUR RATING
    POPULARITY
    4,524
    321
    • Director
      • Mabrouk El Mechri
    • Writers
      • Scott Wiper
      • John Petro
    • Stars
      • Henry Cavill
      • Bruce Willis
      • Sigourney Weaver
    • 190User reviews
    • 124Critic reviews
    • 22Metascore
  • See more at IMDbPro
    • Awards
      • 2 nominations

    Videos3

    No. 1
    Trailer 2:09
    Watch No. 1
    The Cold Light Of Day: Henry Cavill On The Consequences Faced By Will
    Featurette 1:21
    Watch The Cold Light Of Day: Henry Cavill On The Consequences Faced By Will
    The Cold Light Of Day: Sigourney Weaver On What Drew Her To The Film
    Featurette 0:40
    Watch The Cold Light Of Day: Sigourney Weaver On What Drew Her To The Film

    Photos67

    Remi Adefarasin and Mabrouk El Mechri in The Cold Light of Day (2012)
    Henry Cavill in The Cold Light of Day (2012)
    Colm Meaney and Henry Cavill in The Cold Light of Day (2012)
    Henry Cavill in The Cold Light of Day (2012)
    Bruce Willis and Henry Cavill in The Cold Light of Day (2012)
    Verónica Echegui in The Cold Light of Day (2012)
    Bruce Willis in The Cold Light of Day (2012)
    Sigourney Weaver and Bruce Willis in The Cold Light of Day (2012)
    Sigourney Weaver in The Cold Light of Day (2012)
    Henry Cavill, Fermí Reixach, and Verónica Echegui in The Cold Light of Day (2012)
    Henry Cavill and Caroline Goodall in The Cold Light of Day (2012)
    Sigourney Weaver in The Cold Light of Day (2012)

    Top cast

    Edit
    Henry Cavill
    Henry Cavill
    • Will
    Bruce Willis
    Bruce Willis
    • Martin
    Sigourney Weaver
    Sigourney Weaver
    • Carrack
    Verónica Echegui
    Verónica Echegui
    • Lucia
    Joseph Mawle
    Joseph Mawle
    • Gorman
    Caroline Goodall
    Caroline Goodall
    • Laurie
    Rafi Gavron
    Rafi Gavron
    • Josh
    Emma Hamilton
    Emma Hamilton
    • Dara
    Michael Budd
    Michael Budd
    • Esmael
    Roschdy Zem
    Roschdy Zem
    • Zahir
    Óscar Jaenada
    Óscar Jaenada
    • Maximo
    Joe Dixon
    Joe Dixon
    • Dixon
    Jim Piddock
    Jim Piddock
    • Meckler
    Fermí Reixach
    Fermí Reixach
    • Carlos
    Lolo Herrero
    Lolo Herrero
    • Reynaldo
    Luiggi López
    • Puerto Serena Fisherman
    Alex Amaral
    • Cesar
    Paloma Bloyd
    Paloma Bloyd
    • Christina
    • Director
      • Mabrouk El Mechri
    • Writers
      • Scott Wiper
      • John Petro
    • All cast & crew
    • Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

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    Storyline

    Edit

    Did you know

    Edit
    • Trivia
      When Henry Cavill turned up on set, he had just finished shooting Immortals (2011) and came sporting an extremely muscular and ultra-ripped physique. Director Mabrouk El Mechri told him that he had to play an ordinary man and that his current body would be completely wrong for the character. Henry Cavill had to lose all the muscle tone and mass that he gained over the previous six months to get his body to look like that of an average man. He did it by eating and drinking a lot and not working out.
    • Goofs
      Will never runs out of bullets and has no magazines.
    • Quotes

      Lucia: He said he was a business consultant.

      Will: Business consultant. That's rich.

      Lucia: What about you? What do you do?

      Will: I used to run a small company.

      Lucia: And what did your small company do?

      Will: Business consultants.

    • Connections
      Featured in Projector: The Cold Light of Day (2012)
    • Soundtracks
      Nobody But You
      Written by Ali Dee, Alana Da Fonseca and Dan Zank

      Performed by Alana Da Fonseca (as Alana D)

      Courtesy of Deetown Entertainment

    User reviews190

    Review
    Review
    Featured review
    4/10
    Spies are smart and spy movies deserve to be clever – but this is not
    It's hard to really pin down what The Cold Light of Day is supposed to achieve. It reads like a concept reel for emerging leading man Henry Cavill who will proceed to star as Superman in next year's Man of Steel but it makes so many concessions to the sensibilities of a spy movie that it's never going to be a real jumping point for Cavill. Director Mabrouk El Mechri is almost entirely to blame here, making the most unremarkable decisions that force us to reexamine the intrinsic cleverness of spy fiction. The result is a watery, meandering spy movie that manages even at its best moments to be completely ordinary.

    Will Shaw (Henry Cavill) is barely a day into his vacation in Spain when financial problems at home in San Francisco threaten to shorten the trip. After a dispute with his father (Bruce Willis) on the family's rented boat, Will decides to swim ashore for a break. He returns to find his family gone and a call for help at the local police station ends in more trouble. Discovering that he can recover his kidnapped family by giving up a certain briefcase, Will must beat the clock to unravel the underlying mystery but not before he encounters corrupted CIA agent (Sigourney Weaver) and his lost sister (Verónica Echegui).

    On one hand, it's easy to be enthusiastic about engrossing yourself in the story but on the other, The Cold Light of Day gives very few reasons why you should. Better spy movies have thrived on providing viewers with at least some clue on what motivates each character to retrieve an important object, kill a person or escape from capture so the audience can make sense of what transpires on screen. The Cold Light of Day, quite questionably, never reveals or alludes to the life-or-death contents of the briefcase, meaning the biggest difficulty is in believing the necessity of all the carnage. It's perfectly reasonable that Will is willing to fire his first shot and participate in a mad car chase only because he wants to save his family. But it's hardly convincing to have pockets of mercenaries and agents chasing a briefcase that might as well be empty.

    Such is the silliness of The Cold Light of Day that it often struggles to establish what exactly any of its characters intend to accomplish. If Weaver's character is indeed the CIA agent she claims to be, then she must be the dumbest agent to ever be enlisted. With the briefcase already tucked away in her car seat, she turns a mission-accomplished situation into a senseless civilian killing spree as she trades car paint with Will's vehicle down the busy streets of Madrid. Spy movies usually ask the audience to forgive some disbelief in order to enjoy them but The Cold Light of Day is by far the most demanding. The slightest bit of investigation into the weak plot will crumble the movie faster than a fragile egg tart.

    Fortunately, there remains a vestige of believability in Will. As an innocent civilian unwittingly hooked into a web of dangerous games between mercenaries and agents, Cavill brings a sort of genuine clumsiness to his role, allowing the audience to easily buy his character. For this reason, there won't be any explosive set-piece or many scenes featuring hand-to-hand combat. There're a few tricks to prevent the action scenes from becoming too stale and while some of the stunts are decent efforts, others don't always work. Handcuffed between the tragic decision to set most of the action scenes in the night and the already blurry shots of fast-moving action taken by hand-held cameras, you would be hard pressed to find any shot of action that isn't obscured in any way.

    It's a shame because The Cold Light of Day has a talented cast which can actually do justice to the action. However, none of them bothers to offer a performance that's required to make other scenes work. Cavill comes across poorly as a man who's truly shocked that his family's been kidnapped, responding to a call from the kidnappers with an uncanny calmness while Weaver maintains a surprisingly stoical composure throughout. Willis's character is quickly written out of the story before he could show his acting chops. In a year filled with other spy movies like Total Recall, The Bourne Legacy and the upcoming Bond film, The Cold Light of Day looks like a distant relative.
    helpful•54
    29
    • moviexclusive
    • Aug 24, 2012

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    Details

    Edit
    • Release date
      • September 7, 2012 (United States)
    • Countries of origin
      • United States
      • Spain
    • Official sites
      • Official Facebook
      • Official site
    • Languages
      • Hebrew
      • English
      • Spanish
    • Also known as
      • La fría luz del día
    • Filming locations
      • Carretera de la Granadella, Jávea, Spain(the boat and beach scenes)
    • Production companies
      • Summit Entertainment
      • Intrepid Pictures
      • Galavis Film
    • See more company credits at IMDbPro

    Box office

    Edit
    • Budget
      • $20,000,000 (estimated)
    • Gross US & Canada
      • $3,763,583
    • Opening weekend US & Canada
      • $1,831,588
      • Sep 9, 2012
    • Gross worldwide
      • $16,863,583
    See detailed box office info on IMDbPro

    Technical specs

    Edit
    • Runtime
      1 hour 33 minutes
    • Color
      • Color
    • Sound mix
      • Dolby Digital
      • Datasat
      • SDDS
      • Dolby Surround 7.1
    • Aspect ratio
      • 2.35 : 1

    Related news

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