Created by Mark Cullen and Robb Cullen
“Never mess with a man’s dog.”
— the film’s tagline
Once Upon a Time in Venice is a pointless slice of straight-to-streaming cheese starring late-period Bruce Willis; the cinematic equivalent of a self-published novel by an enthusiastic wannabe whose only reference point seems to be other straight-to-streaming crime movies starring Bruce Willis.
A disappointment any way you phone it in. Willis has played this sort of hard-boiled wiseass often, and to usually much greater effect. Here, he sleepwalks through a screenplay that’s barely worth staying awake for: he plays a Venice Beach private eye and inexplicably popular man about town STEVE FORD on the hunt for — wait for it — his missing dog Buddy.
Seems Buddy was accidentally snatched by some local thugs in a drug deal gone wrong with another gang, and Steve teams up with their leader Spyder (Jason Momoa) to retreive the stolen drugs and money, in exchange for the missing pooch.
Guns go off, things blow up, colurful characters abound, and Willis smirks and wisecracks his way through this misguided mess on auto-pilot, but none of it really hits the mark. It’s too goofy (a nude skateboard chase through the streets at midnight?) to be taken seriously — and too violent to be dismissed as a lark.
This publicity calls it a “bullet-ridden action-comedy that shows just how far one man will go for his dog,” but maybe it just displays how far an aging action movie star will go for the ka-ching.
Not even the appearance of John Goodman as Ford’s best friend (next to Buddy) can save this turkey. One Amazon critic even slammed it as “Anti-Christ type of entertainment,” and I may not go that far, but it sure is a helluva waste of time.
At least Buddy was cute.
BUT WHAT THE HELL DO I KNOW?
According to Jason Bailey The New York Times in a September 2025 list of obscure films worth streaming, “this mystery comedy is far better than its contemporaries in the Willis oeuvre, a shaggy dog of a movie in which Willis stars (and actually stars) as a Venice private eye attempting to juggle an increasingly convoluted chain of cases, while barely staying alive and accumulating considerable debt. His profession is a welcome shout-out to Willis’s breakthrough role as detective David Addison on Moonlighting, while his longtime real-life pal John Goodman makes a delightful sidekick. It’s an undisciplined picture, but its shagginess is part of its appeal, and it’s a joy to see Willis so loose and charming, reminding us of what he did so well.”
FILMS
- ONCE UPON A TIME IN VENICE | Buy this DVD | Buy the Buu-Ray | Watch it now
(2017, Voltage Pictures)
94 minutes
Screenplay by Mark Cullen and Robb Cullen
Directed by Mark Cullen
Starring Bruce Willis as STEVE FORD
Also starring John Goodman, Jason Momoa, Famke Janssen, Thomas Middleditch, Emily Robinson, Jessica Gomes, Kaleti Williams, Myles Humphus,
and Adam Goldberg as Lew the Jew
FURTHER INVESTIGATION
- This Turkey for Hire
The Worst and Most Disappointing P.I. Films
Respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith. Special thanks to Special Agent Chris Baldemor for the lead.
