The movie Cross from 2011 stars Brian Austin Green, Micheal Clarke Duncan, Jake Busey, Danny Trejo, Tom Sizemore, and the guy who played Lewis in Revenge of the Nerds. So it had all the potential to be a decent movie. However, this potential was not at all realized. It comes off as a student film, with big names who have gambling debts to the student's dad. Big names, but mediocre special effects, no idea how to build a set, or tie a plot together.

The movie opens with a detective Tom Sizemore investigating an assault. Unfortunately, the victim, Sam, is unconscious and in the hospital. But that won’t stop him. He tells the doctor he's gonna wake her up, and he tells Lewis that he needs to stop in the middle of drawing blood and leave so he can question her, which pisses Lewis off, but since he’s a nerd he doesn’t do anything about it. 

So as any good police officer would do he yells at her and waves in her face until she wakes up, which works, even though we’ve already established she slept through a needle being put in her arm. She is understandably confused and asks “Where am I?” To which our detective replies, and this is a direct quote “Oh honey you’re in heaven, You're in heaven, and I’m god. Okay. Say hi god.” The actress at this point looks genuinely confused, and I like to imagine it’s because Sizemore went off-script. After all, he only did this movie as a favor and we’re not paying him enough to memorize lines or do a second take.

So she tells him how two random thugs started bullying her while she was taking pictures with her camera using something called film. That sounds like a plausible form of technology to have existed in 2011. 

They knock Sam down and she falls comfortably on her back hands politely folded across her chest. Suddenly a group of heavily armed vigilantes shows up with fun names including Jake Busey’s Backfire, Riot, War, Shark, Saint, Ranger, Nuke, the professor, and Mary Anne. But before they can run off the criminal hooligans entirely, another gang rolls up and shoots the hooligans. 

Then she tells Sizemore that everyone started shooting everyone. We see bullets break glass which isn't broken seconds later. Then Brian Austin Green, who I’ll just call BAG from here on out. He gets shot a lot. But don’t you worry your 1990s teenage crush heart, BAG glows green, is bulletproof, and can throw people using the force all thanks to a magically delicious Celtic cross, which I’m assuming is how his character and the movie got his name. We also see for just a second Micheal Clarke Duncan, who I will be calling McD from here on out, peaking out from behind a curtain in the back of a limo, which will help to advance the plot but seems like a weird detail to recall while recalling actual events. 

Sam tells Detective Sizemore that Cross is kinda cute. Awwww. Then Sizemore tells Sam she’s kinda cute, which seems just a smidge inappropriate given the fact he’s an on-duty detective, about 30 older than this drugged-up, laying in a hospital bed, victim of a violent crime he’s investigating. 

Lewis passes off information he took from Sam, and other’s blood to two thugs stating he needs those people alive. The snag is a “descendant of Hera.” 

Meanwhile, two other thugs, one with a sharpie tattoo on his head give us some much-needed exposition disguised as dialogue. Someone who is supposed to be a police officer writes them a ticket, so they shoot him. He bleeds Kool-Aid. Now I say he’s supposed to be a police officer because his uniform consists of a tan shirt, a plastic police badge, and a Child’s walkie-talkie on his waistband. Not his belt, because the wardrobe department couldn’t afford that, so no guns, flashlight, or anything else either. Maybe he was on his way to a costume party. Oh yeah, and the thugs have another bloodline girl unconscious in the back seat, which seems like a bad idea since they have a convertible, but she’s hidden by a blanket recently purchased by the prop department from a thrift store. You can tell by the price tag still attached to it and everything. 

BAG goes to a bar, and manages to park on the street directly in front of the door. He grabs a drink, but notices a girl being accosted by two drunks, one wearing a shirt that says “Dyslexics are people poo.”
He knocks that one out and the girl kicks the other one in the face while wearing high heels, So we have our love interest for the remainder of the film. They go back to his place because she left her keys in her friend’s car and her phone is dead. The love interest is wanting to get frisky, so she goes to the lady's room. Meanwhile, BAG is thinking about his dad, and how when he was 8 years old he gave him the cross straight from his neck and told him to never take it off, and then he dropped dead from four gunshot wounds to the back. You remember the cross from earlier right? It was the one that was repelling bullets when worn. She comes out wearing nothing but a bra and panties and one of his button-down shirts from his time on 90210. Since he’s been thinking about his dad dying, he’s not exactly as horny as her at the moment. She feels rejected, but he’s like no baby, it’s not you, it’s just there's so much you don’t know about me. And she’s like there’s so much you don’t know about me too. And of course, there’s so much they don’t know about each other, they only met an hour ago so  I’d hope there’s a lot they don’t know about each other. But I’d suggest they might start by exchanging first names. Then they do it. 

Somewhere across town McD is playing I shit you not, Go Fish against some of his henchmen, but a King is missing. Who is cheating? Is the henchman with the eye patch? Is it the one in the sleeveless flannel shirt from 1996? Is it Billy Zabka? Is it the legend …. Wait for it … dairy Billy Zabka? The real star of the Karate Kid! What’s he doing here?!? Before that question gets answered though arrives our Immortal Viking bad guy, played by Vinnie Jones, best known as the muscular English bad guy in every movie in the last ten years.

The next morning BAG and his vigillatine crew, which seems to grow in numbers every time they’re shown, are off to save another kiddnappee. In the middle of this raid on an abandoned warehouse, Jake Busey decides he has to make a boom boom, and goes to make number 2 in a stall right next to a bad guy. Then he blows that shit up with a grenade, not an explosive diarrhea.  They save the girl, but on their way out the Viking dude, who is now superfast, steals the cross right off his neck. 

More girls who are descendants of gods get kidnapped. BAG and his crew are set on saving them, cross or not. So they go to a bar, oh and by the way our love interest is now on the team. And on her first mission, she gets herself kidnapped by McD and his men leading to a standoff in the bar. So she’s off to a great start. But in the middle of the stand-off the sharpie tattoo on that one thug changes which side of his head it’s on. But FYI BAG makes a deal with McD to only kidnap her for a day, as he’s not down with OPP or the music of ODB, his favorite wrestler is RVD, and BTW with this deal everything will be AOK, IMHO. I want my MTV. 

But that plan ain’t working as McD gets double-crossed by the Vikings as he had bigger plans than money for nothing and checks for free. See this immortal Viking wants to die, and the only way to do that is to kill everyone on the planet with a magic spear that needs the blood of the descendants of gods to work. So again the cross crew raids a warehouse to save all the kidnapped girls. But as it turns out there’s more to the story BAG is the last needed bloodline is that of BAG. 

So they fight it out on the roof, the whole planet turns red for some reason, BAG gets the cross back, puts it on his neck, and does his best carebear stare to defeat the bad guy, and the planet goes back to it’s more traditional blues and greens. 

Tom Sizemore shows up again to deliver dialogue and once again not at all interact with the main cast. This is more than I can say for Danny Trejo who had 1 .5 seconds of screen time in the opening backstory monogue and then was never seen or heard from again.

To sum up this movie it’s a 9 0 2 1 Oh-no-no-no from me. 

Cross is available streaming on Amazon Prime.