Hot Seat (2022)

Hot Seat takes a deliciously nasty high-concept hook—a man literally trapped by a bomb beneath him and forced to hack on command—and squeezes it for brisk, claustrophobic tension. James Cullen Bressack keeps the movie moving like a ticking clock, cutting between Kevin Dillon’s sweaty, cornered desperation and Mel Gibson’s hard-worn bomb-squad resolve as the walls close in from two directions at once. The fun is in the little pivots: mild surprises and small twists that keep you recalibrating who has the upper hand, even when the setup feels like it should be simple. It’s a lean, noisy R-rated thriller with blunt violence and constant profanity, so it won’t be for viewers craving subtlety, but if you want a pulpy, pressure-cooker ride that doesn’t overstay its welcome, this one delivers.

Hot Seat wants to be a high-concept, ticking-clock thriller where a trapped ex-hacker and a veteran bomb-squad guy race against an unseen villain, and on paper that should be sweaty-palmed fun. In practice, it often feels cheap and a bit tacky, with action beats and “urgent” dialogue that don’t consistently translate into real suspense. The cyber-hacking and bomb threat elements are more pulpy than plausible, and the tension rarely climbs the way the premise promises, even with familiar faces like Mel Gibson and Kevin Dillon trying to sell it. If you’re craving a tight, genuinely nerve-racking thriller, this may test your patience; if you can enjoy a rough-around-the-edges B-movie ride with some violent, profane energy, you might still get a passable time-killer out of it.