Reviews

  • Getaway (2013)

    Getaway (2013)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, June 2014) As a fan of car-chase movies, I took Getaway‘s horrible reviews with a spoonful of salt: Most B-grade action films get low grades anyway, and as we know that it’s really the action sequences that make or break these films, right? Well, it turns out that the reviewers completely understood the film: Getaway is a frustrating waste of money and talent, in the service of incompetent directing by Courtney Solomon (of Dungeons and Dragons infamy) and a near-worthless script. There’s a small comfort to find out that the film doesn’t take a long time before degenerating into nonsense: From the incoherent opening credit sequence alone, it’s obvious that this film will really not be any good. A mess of random camera angles edited with a blender, Getaway makes a blurry mush of its action sequences, wasting several dozen cars in the process: the action scenes flash on-screen with no sense of geography, continuity or excitement. (It’s not a surprise if the film’s best shot, a lengthy uninterrupted driving shot reminiscent of C’était un rendez-vous, temporarily dispenses with the two-cuts-a-second aesthetics) If the incomprehensible action is the worst of Getaway‘s, problems, don’t think it gets off any easier on the rest: Selena Gomez is completely miscast as kind of a shrill and rebellious hacker/car enthusiast: she has the aggressiveness of a kitten, and Getaway (unlike Spring Breakers) can’t even claim to have her turning against type. Ethan Hawke seems out of place here, turning the wheel and looking intensely in front of him as Jon Voight’s voice barks “Do it now!” over and over again. There’s a smidgen of interest in setting the action in Sofia, but none of it goes anywhere as the film almost trips upon itself in trying to justify why an all-American cast should be involved. All it does in underscore how unredeemable Getaway becomes. Not even a half-clever final coda can save the film. It is awful even by the generous standards of car movies, and even enthusiasts are advised to watch something else.

  • Game of Thrones, Season 4 (2014)

    Game of Thrones, Season 4 (2014)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April-June 2014) As a promise for this season of Game of Thrones, “adapting the second half of George R.R. Martin’s A Storm of Swords” couldn’t have been a more enticing prospect given the book’s sheer density of high narrative points. What we got was a bit more than that: a restructured narrative thread that mostly stuck to the book, but went cherry-picking plot threads from latter book in the “A Song of Ice and Fire” series in an effort to even out the pacing and even added subplots and a crucial bit of information not found anywhere in the books so far. Not that the additions were all required: simply telling the story as written was crazy enough, with plenty of role reversals, character deaths and sweeping set-pieces. As an adaptation, you can see the TV show slowly becoming its own thing, trying to keep order over the increasingly out-of-control sweep of the book series. But it’s still remaining broadly faithful to the books, enough so that fans should be pleased with the results. Peter Dinklage and Lena Headley once again steal the show as the lead actors, although new actors such as Pedro Pascal shine by fully incarnating minor characters with a great deal of skill and charm. Otherwise, it’s continuity in action, as the level of quality of the series remains constant and there are few major tonal shifts in what’s on-screen. The budgets are either getting bigger or the production team is getting better, because it seems as if the visual aspect of the show gets more impressive each season. Still, it’s the writing that remains so interesting, especially the way the screenwriters are wrestling a massive thousand-page epic into a format digestible and enjoyable by TV audiences. There’s no watching this series casually now: with the number of characters, the convoluted back-story and the multiplicity of sub-plots, it takes dedicated effort to watch Game of Thrones, and to its credit HBO isn’t even trying to dumb it down to network-TV standards. Even hitting its fourth season, Game of Thrones is more impressive than ever. Of course, the real challenge begins next year, as the adaptation hits what is widely acknowledged as the weakest/dullest book of the series, and the plot lines start venturing past what has been published to date. But it’s been a solid series so far –let’s give the benefit of the doubt to the show-runners for the rest.

  • Ancillary Justice, Ann Leckie

    Ancillary Justice, Ann Leckie

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Orbit, 2013, 410 pages, C$17,00 pb, ISBN 978-0316246620

    I went into this novel with the best of intentions.

    For one thing, Ann Leckie’s Ancillary Justice has, in the first few months of 2014, accumulated an impressive shelf of honors. In between winning the Nebula, BSFA, Clarke, Locus (First novel) awards and getting a much-remarked Hugo nomination, Ancillary Justice has become one of the best-received debut novels in the SF field since Paulo Bacigalupi’s The Windup Girl. As someone who’s always on the lookout for the hot new SF writers, Ancillary Justice earned a spot on my to-read list early on, and cemented its acquisition the moment the Hugo nominations were announced.

    So, to repeat: I went into this novel with the best of intentions.

    And to be clear: I think Ancillary Justice is a good novel.

    Thus, the above being said: Wow, I had a hard time getting into the book.

    Ancillary Justice is billed as a far-future space opera, and that’s eventually correct. It involves a future in which a vast empire has conquered a good chunk of the galaxy, via AIs being incarnated in repurposed human bodies (the titular ancillaries), a leader splitting herself into multiple instance in order to rule the empire, fancy weapons, big starships, space stations and the rest of the hardware that is expected of space operas.

    But it takes a while to get there: As Ancillary Justice opens, we’re stuck with the lead character on a cold isolated planet, nursing an old acquaintance back to health after a coincidental encounter. Flashbacks to nearly twenty years earlier progressively fill in the back-story of our protagonist, an AI fragment seeking justice for what happened to her and her ship.

    So it goes for a long time. A really long time. I’m not the dedicated omnivorous reader I used to be, and novels that don’t immediately grab me are now far more of an annoyance than they were before. But even by my previous standards, Ancillary Justice takes forever to develop into something that I’d consider interesting, and even longer to become compelling reading. By the end of the novel I was all-in, but it felt as if much of the novel was build-up while waiting for something to happen.

    I’m not going to pretend that this personal reaction should be considered a universal assessment. I know, for instance, that I’m really not interested in the kind of gender-recoding that Leckie commits to in the early pages of the novel (the protagonist can’t easily distinguish between genders and doesn’t really see the difference, so everyone is labelled female), and I have a similar lack of interest into many of the elements (songs, multiple temporal strands, fine prose, etc.) that give personality to the novel. Much of what specifically attracted other reviewers to this book were lost on me. I had to wait 40% in the novel before the back-story became clear, and 80% until the present-day action became earnestly interesting. I suspect that this may make me a bad reader; I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not reading with the same concentration than I used to. I am, mind you, a bit surprised at the tenor of the acclaim that the book received: Pacing issues aside, Ancillary Justice makes competent use of well-worn tropes, but I found the idea density to be a bit on the low side for space operas.

    Thus I come away from Ancillary Justice with the sense of having done my duty as a genre SF reader, but not as having had any fun. This doesn’t make Ancillary Justice any less of a success as the novel it meant to be: it’s written competently, put together with skill and is a self-assured contemporary representative of the genre. It’s not a bad nominee for the Hugo. But as for its impact, I remain underwhelmed.

    Ah well; you can’t love them all.

    [August 2014: Ancillary Justice has won the Hugo Award, sweeping whatever awards remained to be swept.]

  • American Mary (2012)

    American Mary (2012)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, June 2014) Three things make American Mary a distinctive film: One good, one disturbing and one bad. It does have, as a considerable asset, a very good performance by Katharine Isabelle as the titular Mary, a medical student who, though debt and happenstance, eventually becomes an underground surgeon specializing in extreme body modifications. (It’s a meaty role that asks for girl-next door likability, model-grade good looks and focused intensity –fortunately, Isabelle can deliver on all three requirements) The disturbing part of the film is how Mary turns to the dark side of medical arts, becoming a torturer/murderer while (mostly) retaining our sympathies. Alas, though, there’s the ending of the film, which doesn’t conclude as much as it’s amputated, half a dozen sub-plots left dangling by a cheap and unsatisfying climax that doesn’t have much to do with the theme or content of the film. The film is ably helmed by the Sloska twins sisters (who also wrote the script), and while their showy extended cameo late in the film feels like one more plot thread that leads nowhere, they do manage to put together three quarter of a pretty good film, backed by a directing style that effectively creates a surgically-creepy atmosphere. I’m not so sure about the film’s feminist credentials when rape-as-a-plot-device sends the protagonist firmly to the dark side of medicine, but Mary is a strong and memorable character and it’s a shame that the film couldn’t wrap up a more effective ending. Nonetheless, there’s a lot to like here for fans of off-putting horror: American Mary (A Canadian production, ironically enough) is off-beat, slick, has good cinematography for its budget class and features an intriguing performance from Tristan Risk. It’s a promising effort from the Sloska Sisters: I’ll gladly have a look at whatever they do next.

  • Excision (2012)

    Excision (2012)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, June 2014) Setting the right tone from the start is crucial: So it is that Excision doesn’t waste any time in trying to disturb its viewers: from the opening moments of the film, we’re thrown off by the violent fantasies of an outcast teenager, and the horror seldom stops on the way to a gory conclusion. Shot with unnerving static full-frames of the actors speaking at the camera, Excision never tries to make things comfortable. There may be moments of levity as we spend time with our wise-cracking lead character (her prayers do reveal a sense of humor beyond her behavioral problems), and it’s not as if our heroine considers herself a victim (…which is a real problem by the end), but this is not an easy film to watch, even when its transgressive intentions become clear. The film gets bonus points for casting John Waters as a reverent and Traci Lord as a religious mom, but the star of the show is AnnaLynne McCord, who undergoes a complete transformation (hair, posture, speech, make-up) as “Pauline”, keeping her radiant self for the bloody dream sequences that introduce yet another off-putting element in the mix. The most disturbing element, though, might be how the film sets up Pauline as the typically-likable movie outcast: quirky, interesting, determined, isolated but somehow sympathetic despite clues that not is well… and then truly confirms that she is not even remotely worth cheering for. That may or may not affect viewers, but the real knock against Excision is its lack of sustained plotting: adapted from a short film, it merely seems to expand Pauline’s character study without adding much in way of story. The end, as viscerally shocking as it may seems, can be seen coming from five minutes away and merely plays out the consequences of a Truly Bad Idea. All of the queasy atmosphere, bravura lead performance and disturbing dream sequences may be shocking in the moment, but Excision doesn’t entirely add up to a satisfying whole. There’s definitely a bright future in store for writer/director Richard Bates Jr., but a more sustained script may be helpful in fulfilling the expectations he creates.

  • The Hole (2009)

    The Hole (2009)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, June 2014) Just about the only noteworthy thing about The Hole is that it’s directed by Joe Dante, a veteran whose influence in the eighties and early nineties has faded to nothingness ever since. His professionalism certainly shows through this minor production: Despite an imperfect script and a family-friendly focus, horror film The Hole is handled professionally, has a pleasant rhythm and doesn’t let late-script disappointment get the better of its presentation. The 3D motif feels silly on the small flat screen, but the direction is clean and polished throughout. The story of three teenagers who discover a bottomless hole in their basement reflecting their deepest fears, The Hole is decidedly a horror film for young teenage audiences: it’s barely gory, low-key in its scare sequences and plays off childhood fears more than deep-set adult trauma. Nonetheless, the quality of the production holds it aloft even if the script doesn’t quite manage to hold together: not only does it spend its time on the symptoms of the hole rather than its root, it squanders some promising leads when it devolves to fairly standard “confront your deepest fears” messaging, along with a suddenly-bizarre finale that literalizes too many metaphors with sub-standard special effects. Chris Massoglia is a bit dull in the lead role, whereas Haley Bennett easily steals her scenes with a bubbly girl-next-door portrayal (although, typically, later script revelations contradict her early-movie reactions). There is, frustratingly, a lot of untapped potential in the initial set-up that is nowhere nearly fulfilled by the rest of the film. Still, it’s handled fairly well, can be watched without too much trouble and generally holds interest until the end. As far as horror movies go, it’s not too bad, and considering the wretched horror films aimed at younger teenagers, The Hole eventually ends up feeling like a welcome throwback to the kind of movies that Joe Dante himself was directing in the eighties.

  • Pawn Shop Chronicles (2013)

    Pawn Shop Chronicles (2013)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, June 2014) I’ve been on the lookout for direct-to-video crime comedies lately, and even misfires like Pawn Shop Chronicles serve to remind me why. An anthology of three interlinked stories, loosely connected by a deep-south pawn shop, this a movie with significant tonal problems and an ending that really doesn’t bring it all together, but the quality of the direction and the number of known actors popping up in small roles is interesting enough. To be fair, Pawn Shop Chronicles starts out well: The first story, “The Shotgun”, brings together people such as a near-unrecognizable Paul Walker and a Thomas Jane cameo for a comic redneck meth heist thriller in which stupidity is never an impediment to attempted crime or loose supremacist affiliations. Director Wayne Kramer’s deft touch is already apparent, with a free-floating camera and small flourishes of visual style. It’s lighthearted and fluid enough to set up good expectations. The second story, “The Ring” is by far the most interesting, but it breaks the tone of the film in a way that’s irredeemable. Matt Dillon turns in a Bruce-Campellian performance as a newlywed husband ready to sacrifice anything to solve a mystery from his past. The story quickly turns gruesome as he keeps investigating, culminating into an abominable discovery that is as gut-wrenching as it doesn’t fit with the tone of the rest of the film. (Curiously enough, I immediately thought about a similarly affecting/atonal scene in Running Scared… and then found out that both movies were directed by the same person.) The ending of the segment can be seem coming from half a country mile away, but there’s a lot of good stuff along the way, including a radiant appearance by Rachelle Lefevre and another quirky performance by DJ Qualls. Still, by the end of “The Ring”, Pawn Shop Chronicles has left a sour taste, and “The Medallion” shifts gears into far more mystical territory with an Elvis Impersonator (Brendan Fraser, quite effective) making a deal with a supernatural entity to ensure an escape from terminal career implosion. There are numerous eccentric sequences along the way, but by this time Pawn Shop Chronicles should be busy bringing together its sub-threads, and while it does, there’s no overwhelming feeling of success: The epilogue set in the pawn shop itself feels more redundant than effective, and by that time the tonal problems are acutely unpleasant, especially when a psychopath thought to have been eliminated earlier reappears on-screen and gets rewarded for his actions. By that time, anyone could be forgiven for giving up on the film as anything more than a collection of interesting sequences loosely strung along a disjointed structure and a lack of satisfying payoffs. (Although it does feature an unexpected “At least Jesus didn’t write Battlefield Earth” bumper sticker.)

  • Trance (2013)

    Trance (2013)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, June 2014) The moment any modern thriller brings in hypnosis as a plot device, it’s time to sit down and expect a tortured maze of plot twists. Trance is no exception: if the title wasn’t enough, it’s clear that we’re in for a warped psychological thriller as soon as our lead character is coerced into seeing a hypnotherapist in order to recall what he has done with a precious stolen painting. At that point, forget about notions of protagonist, antagonist, aggressor or victim, because the script seems determined to twist everything in sight. In the apt hands of director Danny Boyle, this turns into a visually trippy wringer in which nothing is as it seems. As you can expect, this is as far away from a comforting experience as can be, and Trance becomes a film best appreciated by jaded thriller fans who don’t mind massive incoherencies as long as the usual conventions are upended. In this film, the human mind can be infinitely re-programmed, identities shed at the touch of a voice and grudges extended over years of dormancy. It’s strictly genre fare (although there is a good monologue about the nature of ourselves as the sum of our memories), executed professionally and wrapped up with an unsettling bow. As the conflicted lead character, James McAvoy continues to become more and more interesting as an actor. Meanwhile, though, Rosario Dawson eventually steals the entire show with a showy role, while Vincent Cassel unexpectedly comes to play against type by the end of the film. Trance isn’t particularly pleasant, but it holds attention until the end… which isn’t too bad for a heist thriller.

  • After Earth (2013)

    After Earth (2013)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, May 2014) Reviews for science-fiction action thriller After Earth were downright hostile, and after seeing the result it’s not only easy to agree: it’s hard to know where to begin in reporting the on-screen disaster. It didn’t take a long time for the film to grate on my nerves: Never mind the “directed by M. Night Shyamalan” credit warning: the early scenes set in a far-future society multiply the implausibility, from window shades that don’t actually close to creatures that can (only) smell fear to some of the ugliest aesthetics imaginable. It doesn’t get much better once the plot gets in motion and that stupidity compounded by bad design lands two characters away from everything else. The script is terrible, and the direction isn’t much better: there’s little sense of energy or spectacle to the adventures of a young man racing toward survival. (Once upon a time, I defended Shyamalan’s directing skills even as his scripts worsened. Not anymore, and certainly not since The Last Airbender.) There isn’t much imagination on display regarding the features of this future earth (much of it “bigger and faster animals!”, ignoring the time required for evolution.) While it’s good to see Will Smith play a mature adult role, Jaden Smith doesn’t bring much as the lead –although it’s probably just as fair to blame both script and direction for his lack of affect. It all builds up to a snooze of a climax. Despite my own built-in liking for SF adventures, I found little to enjoy here, and considerable relief when the film ended.

  • The Conspiracy (2012)

    The Conspiracy (2012)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, May 2014) The one thing that a horror movie can’t afford to flub is its ending, and if The Conspiracy is interesting throughout, it’s really the ironic conclusion that makes it worthwhile. The premise is relatively witty, as two documentary filmmakers putting together a film on conspiracy theorists get caught up in a true global machination. The film slowly gets creepier at goes along, and if much of it can be foreseen well in advance, the execution keeps things focused. (There’s a lovely mirror shot toward the third act that is as effective a horrific reveal as could have been imagined.) I’m not sure that some of the plot mechanics can sustain more than a casual glimpse, but it does results in a strong third act, and a very well-done conclusion that is all the more horrifying by its reassurance that everything is just fine. As a low-budget Canadian found-footage horror/thriller film, writer/director Christopher MacBride’s The Conspiracy plays effectively with expectations and is a success at what it attempts. Not an unpleasant cable-TV discovery.

  • Stoker (2013)

    Stoker (2013)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, May 2014) Oh, what a fiendishly troubled family relationship is set up in Stoker‘s unapologetic gothic madness. Big foreboding house, dead father, crazy mother, troubled daughter and deranged uncle: it’s all there, along with generous helpings of tentative incest and confirmed murder. It takes a special kind of audience to play along, but director Park Chan-wook’s stylish direction means that everything look good even as the script makes no effort to be anything but a deep genre homage. The film surely takes its own time setting up all of its elements: Stoker is moody and contemplative at the best of time. It doesn’t help that the entire film exists in its own reality out of time, the characters living in personal orbits that have more to do with Hitchcockian homage than anything else. Mia Wasikowska is remarkable as the introspective teenage heroine, easily stealing the spotlight away from Nicole Kidman’s by-the-number deranged mother, but it’s Matthew Goode who gets the acclaim with his Anthony-Perkinsesque role as the visiting Uncle Charles, as his handsome features barely disguise a completely demented mind. The best moments of the film are in the heroine’s reactions to his psychopathy, as they take us farther from classical gothic thrillers and into something quite a bit more twisted. And then there’s the sumptuous direction, which imbues a great deal of class to a script that could have been handled as schlock in less-experienced hands. Where Stoker isn’t as successful is in doing anything with the elements at its disposition. Much of the third-act revelations are obvious, whereas what actually happens during the conclusion feels a bit flat despite the increasing amount of blood being spilled. Stoker makes more sense on a shot-per-shot basis than a sustained film, but the direction is so striking at times that it’s hard to be all that disappointed in the result.

  • The Starving Games (2013)

    The Starving Games (2013)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, May 2014) Every so often, I’m tempted to check out the latest Friedberg/Seltzer “comedy” just to check that this writing/directing duo is still operating at the lowest possible level. The Starving Games confirms that, yes, they are still all the way down there. Showing no measurable improvement over their streak of laugh-free comedies, it features the usual crude humor, meaningless pop references, cartoon violence, cocked-head reaction shot in lieu of a laugh track and lazy re-creations that have marred their previous efforts. It’s meant to be a straight-up feature-length parody of The Hunger Games, but no thought has been spent trying to comment upon the original source material or going further than simply aping the work of better creators. This time, however, Friedberg/Seltzer’s effort seems shoddier than usual: The Starving Games has a visibly lower budget than their previous efforts, and even the bare 70-minutes running time (padded with nearly a quarter-hour’s worth of bloopers and credits) feels endless. There are a few chuckles out there, but not as many as you’d think from even a low-budget parody film: I had more fun watching even the not-so-good A Haunted House. The sole bright spot is Maiara Walsh in the lead role: despite the terrible role, she throws herself in her performance with energy, and remains unexpectedly captivating throughout. Otherwise, there really isn’t much to say about The Starving Games: it’s empty even by the standards of dumb comedies, and only finds a purpose by being filler in-between better things.

  • RoboDoc (2009)

    RoboDoc (2009)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, May 2014) “Amateurish” is a good way to describe much of RoboDoc, from the thin lazy plotting to the on-the-nose dialogues to the overacting to the lame editing. Everyone mugs for laughs in the film, and it’s not even close to be subtle. While it’s closer to C-grade comedy than even the dumbest theatrical releases, RoboDoc at least understands that it’s supposed to be a crude blunt chuckle-fest. As a result, it feels a bit funnier than many more respectable comedies: For all of the film’s casual sexism and gratuitous racism, it’s surprisingly good natured. (There’s a worrying lobotomy-revenge gag late in the film, but it sets up a pretty good political joke not even thirty seconds later.) It would be easy to believe that much of the film’s built-in humanism comes from the two practicing MDs who wrote the script, in which a robotic doctor actually ends up being a paragon of good medicine and more efficient health-care. Insurance companies and ambulance-chasing lawyers are mercilessly mocked, and the end of the film suggests a better world in the making… which really isn’t the kind of science-fictional utopian thinking we expect in confronting a film presented by National Lampoon. The film’s comedy may not fly high, but it’s dense enough to offer a chuckle every few moments. William Haze isn’t too bad as the titular robodoc, but the only two actors who somehow manage to float above the rest are experienced sitcom actors Alan Thicke as a patrician doctor, and David Faustino as a nebbish engineer. Much of the rest is forgettable. Still, I’ve been bored, disgusted or put off by at least three other far bigger-budgeted films in the past week alone, and my tolerance for silly low-budget films grows at every failed Hollywood monstrosity. So while I’m not going to pretend that RoboDoc is worth more than a passing look in the absence of anything better, I’m not going to pretend that it’s completely worthless either. Fans of low-grade comedies can already recognize if they’re likely to enjoy it.

  • Empire State (2013)

    Empire State (2013)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, May 2014) Here’s a philosophical question: If you’re bored enough by a film that you slide off in a pleasant slumber by the time the third act rolls, and rouse just before the end credit, and yet feel no need to go back to check what you’ve missed, can you be said to have watched the entire film? What about when your attention is distracted by a second screen? What about when you just go to the bathroom, or grab a bite from the kitchen without pausing? What about when you blink and miss a few frames of the film? At what point does “not watching” become relevant, and when does it turn into a review statement of its own? All of this to say that while I had reasonably high hopes for Empire State, the film quickly degenerated in an implausible snooze-fest. The opening moments of the film set up an intriguing early-eighties slice of life in New York’s Greek community. Then it’s off to a heist caper, but not just any heist caper: one of the least plausible heist capers imaginable, filled with coincidences, laziness and hard-to-accept arbitrariness. Events “just happen” and it’s hard for fiction to let its main character plan such a heist while warning signs about him all abound. After an hour, the verdict is clear: Empire State is dull, tired and with little grace in the way it uses either its historical setting or its actors. Liam Hemsworth isn’t developing as a compelling lead actor and this film does nothing to enhance his distinctiveness as anything more than “Chris Hemsworth’s brother.” Michael Angarano’s more distinctive, but his slimeball character is more annoying than striking. Meanwhile, don’t be fooled by the box-cover: While Dwayne Johnson is in the film, he’s only in there for a few minutes, and seems to belong in an entirely different film every time he’s on-screen. Little wonder that even with a moderately-high budget, Empire State went direct-to-video ($11 million isn’t much by blockbuster standards, but it’s higher than most film of this kind). There’s little here that make the film special in any fashion.

  • Vehicle 19 (2013)

    Vehicle 19 (2013)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, May 2014) It’s easy to dismiss Vehicle 19 as not much more than a hum-drum thriller: it uses well-worn plot elements, doesn’t show any particularly memorable moments, features a dim-witted lead character, feels slow most of the time and if Paul Walker has now been semi-ennobled in death, he remained a fairly average actor throughout his career. But such a quick dismissal misses a good chunk of what makes this film remarkable. Top of the list would be the fact that, save for its final shot, Vehicle 19 never steps outside the minivan where it is set. The camera looks in (usually at Walker) or looks out but never leaves the vehicle, creating a claustrophobic feeling that’s appropriate for the trapped lead character. Writer/director Mukunda Michael Dewil’s plot screws are occasionally ingenious in the ways they, too, stop the film from leaving the minivan. The car chase sequences may feel too restrained to provide much entertainment, but their limited perspective ranks as unique (and seldom more so than in smashing through a convenience store). Vehicle 19 never quite manages to convert its unique assets into something fully engaging, but it does get a few points for ambition, for its South-African Johannesburg setting and for never quite spelling out its entire back-story. It could have been made a bit better, but what’s in there will strike the interest of a few viewers, especially those who like clever premises.