Contracted to kill. Fighting to survive.
24 Hours to Live is a 2017 South African/American Science Fiction Action Genre film starring Ethan Hawke and featuring Rutger Hauer.
Travis Conrad is a hitman sent after a man meant to testify before the United Nations. He is shot by an Interpol Special Agent in the process of getting his man. However, just after he dies, he suddenly wakes up again. You see, his employers have resurrected him to reveal his target's location before he's disposed of for good. Thing is, Travis retains his combat skills, breaks free and seeks revenge.
Not to be confused with the Hey Arnold! episode "24 Hrs. to Live."
This film contains examples of:
- Action Mom: Lin is a single mother, and more than capable of taking care of herself when the bullets flying.
- Big Bad: Wetzler, the Corrupt Corporate Executive who resurrected Conrad.
- Disposing of a Body: A particularly nightmarish scene has Zera testifying before the UN about him and a bunch of other Red Mountain employees finding 70 bodies left after the resurrection experiments, dumping them in a mass grave, and burning them.
- Doomed Protagonist: Travis Conrad has exactly 24 hours to live, due to undergoing a resurrection procedure. Once that 24 hours ends, he will die permanently. He does, but is resurrected at the very end of the film.
- Event Title
- Evil Former Friend: Tim Morrow, Wetzler's Dragon, used to be Conrad's best friend, and is broken up over having to try and kill him.
- From Camouflage to Criminal: Conrad became a hitman after his discharge from the US military.
- Heel–Face Turn:
- Travis Conrad starts off as a freelance assassin, but turns on his bosses when he's resurrected.
- Tim Morrow, Wetzler's chief gun, spends the whole film conflicted and ultimately ends up taking Conrad's side, even getting to kill his former boss himself.
- MegaCorp: The main antagonists are Red Mountain, a military company that does unethical experiments to resurrect people for profit.
- Never Trust a Trailer: The film's trailer flat out lies about what the story is. Namely, it makes it look like Conrad has been poisoned, and has twenty four hours to eliminate his target or he will die. The story is nothing like that.
- Old Soldier: Frank, Conrad's father-in-law. When Wetzler sends two men to kill him, Frank manages to get the drop on them.
- Playing with Syringes: Red Mountain kidnaps 70 civilians-man, woman or child-and experiments on them to create a resurrection process. All of them die. The experiments are even directly compared to Josef Mengele's.
- Roaring Rampage of Revenge: A hitman goes after his employers when they resurrect him and decide to kill him again.
- Suicidal Overconfidence : Wetzler appears to be neurologically incapable of not being overly confident all the time. What does he do when Travis breaks into his office after killing dozens of his men? Walk as calmly and slowly as possible to the door, as if Travis is really going to let him live after all he's done! The most absurd thing about it all is that he could possibly have escaped Travis if he had just run full speed to the door while Travis was busy fighting one of the guards.
- The Sociopath: Wetzler, a Corrupt Corporate Executive who experimented on dozens of African villagers to perfect a resurrection technique, and explicitly states that his only philosophy in life is everybody doing what he wants.
- The Stool Pigeon: Conrad's initial foray into the plot is when he's hired to kill a Red Mountain employee turned whistleblower after he has to dispose of the bodies. That guy's killed halfway through, so Conrad has to stop Red Mountain himself.
- Visionary Villain: Metzler believes his resurrection process will "change the face of warfare." Played with in that that isn't his primary goal; he just wants a lot of money.
- You and What Army?: When Conrad goes to rescue Lin's son, the goons ask how he's gonna make them do anything when they're wildly outgunned, only for all the families of the people Red Mountain experimented on to come out as backup.
