Rating: D+
Dir: Aash Aaron
Star: Robert Díaz, Kazuya Wright, Lexie Symon, Glenn McLaren
This low-budget Australian movie is only of significance for one thing. It’s the feature debut of future Barbie star, Margot Robbie. Not that she would probably thank you for bringing it up, because it’s really not very good. However, Aaron was also responsible for Robbie’s second feature role, slasher film I.C.U., so I guess she found it an adequate experience. Albeit potentially of the “beggars can’t be choosers” kind at this point in her career. She lasts less then twenty minutes into her inaugural production, though does have a significant role. Robbie plays Cassandra, the girlfriend of its central character, Luke (Diaz), and she is killed on the beach by a gang of thugs, during a date with him (above), while he is badly beaten.
As he recovers is hospital, his physical therapist, Leigh (McLaren), suggests hitting back at those responsible, and after Luke is discharged, continues working with him to provide the necessary set of skills for vengeance. There is a bit of a problem, in that Luke doesn’t know exactly who attacked him. But a good vigilante isn’t bothered by such things, and he simply starts taking out the scum of the streets in general. Complicating matters, the detective assigned to his case, Pauline Jennings (Symon), a) is now in a relationship with him, and b) just got assigned to look into the vigilante attacks. Then Luke learns from an informant who was responsible for the death of Cassandra: mob-boss son and local hothead, Alex (Wright).
Two main things work against this. The first is – and stop me if you’ve heard this before – bad audio, which often renders the lines inaudible. I’d not mind so much if this affected dialogue, because poor recording does happen. But when a voice-over can’t be heard beneath the screeching heavy metal soundtrack, there’s an issue of basic competence. I tried enabling the subtitles: these were not a great deal of help, with the most common word in them being “[indistinct]”. The other problem is Diaz, who is simply implausible as a hard-edged instrument of wrath, with his arc to that position being thoroughly unconvincing. Luke basically goes from a spineless pussy, to a spineless pussy in a black ski-mask, as on the poster.
At least being Australian does give the film an easy out for the lack of firearms, though the fisticuffs which replace them are only competent at best. It does improve somewhat in the second half, the audio clearing up a bit and managing a couple of almost bordering on the interesting arguments, between Pauline and Luke on the philosophical nature of violence. [Suspect Internal Affairs may well want a chat with Det. Jennings, however] It’s not sufficient to move this more than a couple of notches above the bottom of the barrel. Those looking for a good dose of crypto-fascist retribution are likely going to be as disappointed with this, as any Margot Robbie completists wanting to cross it off their lists.
[March 2010] When the girlfriend of Luke (Diaz) is raped and murdered and he himself is beaten within an inch of his life, he decides to use his considerable resources (he’s a millionaire) to reinvent himself as a ski-mask clad vigilante, cleaning the scum off the streets. He gets trained in hardcore fighting techniques by his physical therapist, and embarks on a mission to locate the three perpetrators – but, while their identities remain annoyingly unknown to him, he is happy to take it out on anyone who crosses his path. It turns out that the psychotic head of the trio (Wright) is the son of the local mob boss, who has his hands full keeping his offspring out of the hands of the local cops, though it helps that most of them are on his payroll.
Hence, Luke’s case dead-ends, much to the disgust of one local cop (Symon), who finds herself getting involved with Alex on more than a strictly-procedural level. Will he be able to keep his other life a secret from his girlfriend, and will he complete his own mission of vengeance, or will he become a victim of it, and be destroyed by his own inner demons? As a low-rent Death Wish knockoff, it’s not unwatchable, and the occasionally-obvious cheapness sometimes works for the movie, rather than against it. But there are enough problems here to pose significant difficulties. From a technical viewpoint, the biggest is a very poor sound mix, which leaves large chunks of the dialogue basically inaudible.
Fortunately, it’s not exactly hard to work out what’s going on, so this is not much more than an irritant. More troublesome is the film’s odd refusal to show hardly any of the assault which launches Luke on his rampage. By not depicting it, the director loses all real chance for the hero’s subsequent exploits to be justified, and the other subplots, such as his relationship with the cop, never step up to provide any alternative depth. The action isn’t bad, and the villains are appropriately evil, but Diaz lacks the necessary charisma to pull it off, and as a result, there’s nothing much in the execution to make this anything more than a way to waste ninety minutes. C