Rating: C
Dir: Esa Jussila
Star: Jere Saarela, Jarmo Pukkila, Ari Savonen, Katriina Rajaniemi
a.k.a. Carnage
In this case, I think the alternate title is probably more accurate. (Pri)Sons is too clever by half, for a film which really only has one purpose. This has more in common with splat-action titles like Project Wolf Hunting or The Night Comes for Us. Unfortunately, it is not as good as either. It certainly delivers on the gory mayhem. If Danny Butterman in Hot Fuzz had seen this, he’d have asked Nicholas Angel, “Is it true that you can saw a man’s head off with barbed wire?” (top). But the makers seem to have forgotten about everything else, and there’s good reason why the alternate title is not Plot or Characters.
What passes for a hero, in subdued lighting and if you squint a bit, is Juha Kaivola (Saarela). He has just got out of prison, and is offered a job working at a questionable family run by the Lind brothers, Nico (Pukkila) and Mikael (Savonen). At first it seems like nothing more than a high-class brothel, with rich men being pleasured by attractive women. But his first night on duty goes spectacularly wrong, as the building comes under assault from a force of heavily armed attackers, because… And that’s the problem. Not so much that you don’t know the reason (at least, eventually). It’s to do with the prison cells in the basement, not exactly standard features of a cat-house. The issue is more that it’s hard to give a damn.
Part of it is on Juha, who makes little or no impact – just one in a procession of large men in monkey suits. It’s notable that the two characters who do create some kind of impression – and we’re still talking not much deeper than “walking on a freshly vacuumed pile carpet” – are women. There’s Jessica (Rajaniemi), one of the working girls who ends up helping out Juha. On the other side is Koch (Veera W. Vilo), a total psycho, with a fondness for slowly gutting enemies with her serrated blade. Or stabbing them with her hair-pins. If the makers had concentrated on this pair instead of… /gestures vaguely, the film might have been on to something, rather than an admittedly impressive effects show-reel.
Jussila does direct things with a certain degree of style, and a season pass to Colour Filters R Us. As well as shooting it, the director also wrote the screenplay, edited it, was a producer, did visual FX, and was one of the action choreographers. Got to respect the hustle involved, but I would have to say, I can tell. His talents are not equally split, and the script is definitely the movie’s biggest weakness. There is some promise: while I don’t know what the price-tag was on this, it’s probably less than I would guess, based on how it looks. It’s just the lack of anything on which to hang this technical proficiency, leaving the film ultimately forgettable.