CATCH 44
DIRECTOR: Aaron Harvey
CAST: Forest Whitaker, |Bruce Willis, Malin Akerman, Nikki Reed, Deborah Ann Woll
CLASSIFICATION: 16V
RUNNING TIME: 82 minutes
RATING: **
WITH ITS convoluted storyline, strong ensemble cast and chronologically challenged storyline, this film is a bad nod to Quentin Tarantino.
Complete with the magazine-style introduction, fast cutaways and jangly music, but minus that way-too-cool feel.
Where Tarantino manages to make it all work out in the end with great dollops of style, director Aaron Harvey simply makes an overfried hash of this one. Oh, and there ARE continuity faults, which are an automatic death knell for this type of crime noir thriller which thrives on detail.
The story is centred on a job gone wrong in a night-time diner in the middle of nowhere.
Best friends Tess (Malin Akerman), Kara (Nikki Reed) and Tara (Woll) are meant to intercept a drug shipment, but things go wrong from the get-go.
The first sequence of events is then replayed in ever-increasing detail, expanding the storyline, but become more and more boring, despite the added elements and characters.
It’s supposed to be dark and edgy, with twisted personalities and slick dialogue, but what it is, is too heavy on the expository conversations and thin on the plot or character develop- ment.
Double-crosses become triple-crosses and then Bruce Willis strides in, but even he can’t save the turkey.
The characterisation is clichéd and rather pointless when the character has died. What is the point of learning more about someone who is literally going nowhere and then turns out to be a bit of a dead nonentity?
It plods along, despite the viewer working out where it is going in the second iteration. The actors try hard, but they don’t have much to work with.
If you liked ... Vantage Point or Sukiyaki Western Django ... you will like this.