''Reach Me'' is a 2014 American

drama film In film and television, drama is a category or genre of narrative fiction (or semi-fiction) intended to be more serious than humorous in tone. Drama of this kind is usually qualified with additional terms that specify its particular super ...

directed and written by

John Herzfeld John Herzfeld (born April 15, 1947) is an American film and television director, screenwriter, actor and producer. His feature film directing credits include '' Two of a Kind'' (1983), '' 2 Days in the Valley'' (1996), '' 15 Minutes'' (2001) and ...

. The film stars Sylvester Stallone,

Kyra Sedgwick Kyra Minturn Sedgwick (; born August 19, 1965) is an American actress, producer and director. For her starring role as Deputy Chief Brenda Leigh Johnson on the TNT crime drama ''The Closer'', she won a Golden Globe Award in 2007 and an Emmy Awa ...

Terry Crews Terry Alan Crews (born July 30, 1968) is an American actor, television host, and former American footballer. He played Julius Rock in the UPN/ CW sitcom ''Everybody Hates Chris'', which aired from 2005 to 2009, and portrayed Terry Jeffords ...

Thomas Jane Thomas Jane (born Thomas Elliott III; February 22, 1969) is an American actor. He is known for appearing in the films Padamati Sandhya Ragam (1987), ''Boogie Nights'' (1997), '' Deep Blue Sea'' (1999), '' The Punisher'' (2004), '' The Mist'' ( ...

, Kevin Connolly,

Lauren Cohan Lauren Cohan (born January 7, 1982) is an American-British actress best known for her role as Maggie Greene in the AMC post-apocalyptic horror television series '' The Walking Dead'' (2011–2018; 2020–2022). Her other notable TV roles incl ...

Kelsey Grammer Allen Kelsey Grammer (born February 21, 1955) is an American actor and producer. He gained notoriety and acclaim for his role as psychiatrist Dr. Frasier Crane on the NBC sitcom ''Cheers'' (1984-1993) and its spin-off ''Frasier'' (1993-2004), ...

, and

Tom Berenger Tom Berenger (born Thomas Michael Moore; May 31, 1949) is an American actor. He was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his portrayal of Staff Sergeant Bob Barnes in ''Platoon'' (1986). He is also known for playing Jake ...

. The film was produced by Rebekah Chaney,

Cassian Elwes Cassian Cary Elwes (born 7 August 1959) is a British independent film producer and talent agent. Early life and education Cassian Elwes was born on 7 August 1959 in London, England. He is the son of Dominic Elwes, a portrait painter, and Tessa ...

, Buddy Patrick, John Herzfeld. The plot revolves around how a self-help book inspires a diverse group of people: a journalist and his editor, a former inmate, a hip-hop mogul, an actor and an undercover cop. The creation of ''Reach Me'' was influenced as least partly by Herzfeld's memories of seeing televangelist

Reverend Ike Frederick J. Eikerenkoetter II, better known as Reverend Ike (June 1, 1935 – July 28, 2009), was an American minister and evangelist based in New York City. He was known for the slogan "You can't lose with the stuff I use!" Though his prea ...

and reading

Napoleon Hill Oliver Napoleon Hill (October 26, 1883 – November 8, 1970) was an American self-help author. He is best known for his book ''Think and Grow Rich'' (1937), which is among the best-selling self-help books of all time. Hill's works insisted th ...

's self-help book, ''

Think and Grow Rich ''Think and Grow Rich'' is a book written by Napoleon Hill in 1937 and promoted as a personal development and self-improvement book. He claimed to be inspired by a suggestion from business magnate and later-philanthropist Andrew Carnegie. Firs ...

'', although Herzfeld says the film is "not about getting rich, but believing in yourself."

Cast

* Sylvester Stallone as Gerald *

as Collette *

as Wolfie *

as Kate *

as Angelo AldoBrandini * Kevin Connolly as Roger King *

as Teddy * Nelly as E-Ruption *

Omari Hardwick Omari Latif Hardwick (born January 9, 1974) is an American actor known for his starring role as James "Ghost" St. Patrick, the protagonist of Starz's ''Power'' and his role as Vanderohe in Zack Snyder's ''Army of the Dead'' (2021). He is also kn ...

as Dominic *

as Wilson *

Danny Trejo Danny Trejo ( ; born May 16, 1944) is an American actor. He has appeared in films including ''Desperado'', ''Heat'', and the ''From Dusk Till Dawn'' film series. With frequent collaborator and his second cousin Robert Rodriguez, he portrayed ...

as Vic * Danny Aiello as Father Paul * Ryan Kwanten as Jack Burns *

David O'Hara David Patrick O'Hara (born 9 July 1965) is a Scottish stage and character actor. A graduate of the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama in London, he is best known to audiences for his numerous supporting roles in high-profile films; includ ...

as Thumper * Elizabeth Henstridge as Eve * Rebekah Chaney as Denise-Denise *

Chuck Zito Charles Alfred Zito Jr. (born March 1, 1953) is an American actor and boxer who is the former president of the New York chapter of the Hells Angels, and later became an actor. Early life Zito was born in New York, the second of three children of ...

as Joe * Tom Sizemore as Frank *

Cary Elwes Ivan Simon Cary Elwes (; born 26 October 1962) is an English actor and writer. He is known for his leading film roles as Westley in ''The Princess Bride'' (1987), Robin Hood in '' Robin Hood: Men in Tights'' (1993), and Dr. Lawrence Gordon in ...

as Kersey

Production

To build a solid cast for the movie, Herzfeld started with Stallone; the two had been friends since they were roommates together as students at

University of Miami The University of Miami (UM, UMiami, Miami, U of M, and The U) is a private research university in Coral Gables, Florida. , the university enrolled 19,096 students in 12 colleges and schools across nearly 350 academic majors and programs, i ...

. After Stallone committed to participate, other actors agreed to join the cast at minimum pay rates. Herzfeld recruited another long-time friend, Danny Aiello, to play the role of a mobster – but after Aiello declined that role, Herzfeld and Aiello collaborated on creating the character of Father Paul. Aiello credits his work on ''Reach Me'' with aiding his emotional recovery from the death of his son,

Danny Aiello III Daniel Louis Aiello III (January 27, 1957 – May 1, 2010) was an American stunt performer, stunt coordinator, director, and actor in film and television. He was the son of actor Danny Aiello. Death Aiello died of pancreatic cancer, age 5 ...

. While inviting friends' participation in ''Reach Me'', Herzfeld also enlisted close relatives of participants: Herzfeld's wife, Rebekah Chaney, joined as co-producer and cast member. Stallone's youngest daughter, Scarlet, had her acting debut in ''Reach Me'', although she described the experience as "pretty humiliating" because she "just had to say one tiny line, and they had to cut that in half." During principal photography in 2013, funding for the film dried up when one of the investors, Norman Zada, backed out and sued for return of . Herzfeld, Stallone and producers Rebekah Chaney and Cassian Elwes started a Kickstarter campaign to raise their goal of by September 19. Despite reaching the goal on Kickstarter, the production team decided to withdraw its Kickstarter campaign and start again with the competing crowdfunding platform Indiegogo, citing its broader and more flexible capabilities. The Indiegogo campaign set a goal for starting on September 17 and ended on September 22 with a total of . Total production costs for the film are estimated at .

Marketing

The first official trailer for John Herzfeld's ''Reach Me'' was released on July 7, 2014, and the second official trailer was released on September 25, 2014.

Reception

The film holds a 4% approval rating on

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...

based on 24 reviews, with an average rating of 3.2/10. The website's critics consensus reads: "Featuring a bewildering array of talented actors pummeled by disjointed direction and a dull, hackneyed script, ''Reach Me'' is so fundamentally misbegotten that its title reads more like a threat." At

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created by Jason Dietz, Marc ...

, which assigns a

weighted average The weighted arithmetic mean is similar to an ordinary arithmetic mean (the most common type of average), except that instead of each of the data points contributing equally to the final average, some data points contribute more than others. The ...

score out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the film received an average score of 21% based on 14 reviews.

References

External links