A lousy story supported by terrible acting and misdirected direction make this film thoroughly forgettable. It's worst element is its storyline, such as it is stereotypical characters, a steretypical plot line (that's when you can follow it at all) with multiple betrayals, plot points that are introduced and never followed up on, make this completely incomprehensible. It's been marketed as a martial arts film but there's hardly any martial arts in it, and what's there isn't very interestingly filmed, at least not by Asian standards, which pretty much set the bar these days. The film is more talk than anything else, tiresome and endless conversation sequences, with postcard views of Brazil competing against lackluster cheap sets for visual interest. Lead actress Alex Van Hagen (a Nordic tae kwan do champion) is okay, she is personable and looks tough enough for her role as a fighter; Sinewy supporting actress Laura Putney (from TV's JAG) is strikingly attractive and does a very good job on all of her scenes, coming across as a wickedly seductive temptress with an agenda of her own I could have sat and watched her all day. Jay Richardson as the lead baddie is satisfactory, unfortunately he has some pretty terrible lines to say, and the overlong scene between he and Putney at the end is, well, overlong and wears out its welcome (other than the prolonged ability for us to gaze at Laura in that red dress) long before it ends. The acting by the other players is pretty terrible, André Lima is robotic in his role as Richardson's enforcer and so over-the-top in his tough-guy machismo that it's not even campy. One literally cringes to watch some of them emote (or not emote, as the case may be). A terribly predictive synth musical score makes everyone's smallest glimmer into something cosmically menacing; it sets neither the tone nor the style needed to support a film like this properly. Director Halder Gomes has been described by some as a "Brazilian Tarantino" although there's little evidence of that here. Word also has it that he had to throw out 50 pages of his screenplay to bring the film down to a workable length looks like chose them at random, as scenes interact haphazardly and shift like shards of falling glass, making the story difficult enough to follow even at its best. Reportedly Gomes likes to "keep his audience guessing" and he certainly proves to be a master at doing that in this film.
1 out of 2 found this helpful.
Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink
