It was late.
I was bored. Those were my
excuses when I ran this on Netflix streaming.
Frankly, it seems like there have been a stream of hooker movies
crossing my path lately, and since I had moderately positive feelings about
both Elektra Luxx and Sweet Karma, I decided to give this one
a shot.
In some ways, this was what I expected: nudity, sex, violence, and drugs. I was surprised at the gritty feel of Sidney’s
streets, and the pervasiveness of the “street trade” that’s portrayed upon
them. In a country that has legalized,
professionalized prostitution, I had a hard time believing that there were this
many women working under the semi-feudal “pimp ‘n ho” system.
Two-thirds of this movie is a chase scene, which can
go either way. It was great in Apocalypto, because the chase energy of
the chase is… boosted by random events that reinvent that initial rush. X
does much of that, with our, um, hooker heroines having repeated run-ins with
their pursuer, and learning a few things about other characters in the film as
they go along. Are some of these events
during the frantic rush through Sidney a bit hard to swallow? Hell, yeah.
In fact, it had that same feeling that Adventures in Babysitting had, that feeling that says, they’re in a
city of millions and can’t evade their pursuer (and weren’t smart enough to
stop their trade for even a few minutes after witnessing a brutal murder).
I will say that I totally loved the Holly
character. She’s not the grizzled street
pro that you might run in to on Law &
Order or some similar crime drama.
She’s pretty upscale, has worked her way up the ladder, and has worked
hard so that she can quit the life early and retire to someplace she
loves. She’s also tough as nails, taking
a beating when captured, and giving every cent of it back in the flight from
her pursuer. I do loves me some tough
ladies, so of course my interest was peaked.
The more we learn about Holly, the more I liked.
But Holly wasn’t alone in the characters I found
interesting. Her one-time partner, Shay,
has this rough life story that’s probably a little stereotypical: her mom dies when Shay’s a teen, leaving her
with a stepfather, hints at abuse at the stepfather’s hands. But Shay wasn’t angry or bitter. She managed to walk the line between abject naivety
and street-wise, but was tottering on the naïve side. Half of what happens to Shay is because she’s
still willing to trust, even after all the crap she’s seen and done.
So, this wasn’t a perfect movie. The story gets shaky at times, but the
character development more than makes up for it. If you get bored late one night, and you have
access to Netflix streaming, this isn’t a terrible way to perk you up.
