Unrated, 1 hr. 25 min. Directed by: Andrew Thomas Hunt. DVD Release Date: June 14, 2011.
Generally, it’s a bad sign when you see a
brand-spanking-new movie, even a straight-to-vid one, appear on Netflix’s Watch Instantly. But, conceptually, I thought that this was a
rather solid effort at a film: it had a story that most of us could get behind,
although I think the devil really was in the details for these guys. Those details kept this film’s solid concept
from translating out in to something that was executed solidly.
When I did research (by which I mean I used
Google) on this movie after watching it, I was a little embarrassed how many
mean-spirited folks on the internet were saying that the lead character was
made a mute because the woman cast for the part, former Playmate Shera Bechard,
couldn’t “act her way through a porno” as one person put it. There might be some truth to that, but, by
and large, I didn’t have all that many complaints about Bechard’s performance,
silent or otherwise. Granted, there is
that whole burlesque scene that lends credence, to the GIFTer stance on
Bechard, because they spent a lot of time cashing in on some of her greatest
assets.
There were a lot of characters, many of whom
possessed those complicated Russian names.
Once upon a time, while I foolishly chose to take a Russian Civ class in
my undergrad days, the professor suggested that we rename the characters to
something we could track. In her words,
“there are only so many Mikhail Mikhailoviches that you can remember, after
that, it’s all borscht.” Professor
Savelieva hadn’t steered me wrong before, and it would have been nice to have
that option during the film. By the time
this revenge plot unfolds, I couldn’t remember who half the characters were…
but in truth, it wasn’t that big of a deal.
Basically, I didn’t think this was terrible, and
I thought it showed promise from what I’m guessing is a relatively new
director. Give him a few more films
under his belt and I think we’ll see really good things.
