*. Near the beginning of Cosmic Sin disgraced “blood general” James Ford (Bruce Willis) walks into a bar. And here’s the joke. After he orders a drink one of the patrons sidles up next to him and tries to get something started. “Once upon a time you were a big, bad motherfucker,” he says to Willis. “But now . . .”
*. After that a fight breaks out and the question, never answered, is left hanging. But now what, Bruce?
*. But now we have the busy tail-end of Bruce Willis’s career, where he is making movies like Cosmic Sin. And Breach, a very similar film and one that was written by Edward Drake, who both writes and directs here.
*. I wasn’t that impressed by Breach, but it was an SF classic compared to Cosmic Sin. This is a horrifically bad movie, to the point where it is actually kind of enjoyable, if you’re in the mood for such perverse pleasures. Go in expecting one of the worst movies you’ll see all year, and you won’t be disappointed. I know I wasn’t.
*. The idea here is that in the year 2524 (they’re very specific on dates) aliens make a hostile first contact with the human Alliance. Basically the aliens look and sound like J-horror zombies when they infect and take over humans, though I’m not sure what they look like in their native form since they tend to dress up like evil monks. The call then goes out to bring back James Ford because he’s the only one nasty enough to deal with the threat. After all, he dropped a Q-bomb on a rebel base some years earlier that killed 70 million people, so you know he’s bad.
*. How bad? Asked by fellow general Eron Ryle (Frank Grillo, somehow looking even less interested in what’s going on than Willis) if he thinks he has what it takes to do the job he replies “Ask me that again. I dare you.”

*. That’s bad, but don’t think it even begins to plumb the depths of this script, which is filled with similar howlers and clichés. This is a movie that dares you to laugh at it, and it would be churlish not to accept the challenge. I had many good laughs.
*. Anyway, Ford and Ryle head off to the forest planet of Ellora, which looks like Georgia because it is, in order to drop a Q-bomb on the Sigea. You’ve gotta love alien races like the Sigea. They have incredibly advanced technology, including giant space gates that they use to hop about the universe, but they like to fight with clubs and swords. But then the humans in the twenty-sixth century are still driving pick-ups and motorbikes too, and warfare hasn’t advanced beyond wearing really clunky body armour and carrying guns that are seven feet long (I’m not making that up).
*. You have to wonder how much Willis is getting paid for this and, if it’s a lot, what bean counter thought he was worth the investment in such a dead-on-arrival property. Cosmic Sin looks like a cheap SF television show from the 1980s or ’90s, and sounds even worse than that. How long are you going to keep doing this to us, Bruce?