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“Robust man with coronary heart of gold” is the cliché that gives the gist to “The Enforcer,” and nothing a lot turns as much as refresh or complicate that hoary hook. This criminal-underworld thriller advantages from Antonio Banderas’ star charisma as a veteran mob strong-arm who turns towards his personal group to be able to rescue an imperiled teen. Richard Hughes’ characteristic directorial debut additionally elevates issues considerably with a slick and trendy presentation. However the outcomes stay too hogtied by authentic “Level Break” scribe W. Peter Iliff’s routine, elemental screenplay to rise above the extent of disposable style fodder.
Cuda (Banderas) is simply out of jail, having dutifully taken the warmth for deeds carried out in service to Miami syndicate boss Estelle (Kate Bosworth). He hopes to revive relations together with his 15-year-old daughter, however she’s cautious after his lengthy absence, his ex-wife outright hostile. Maybe as a regretful consequence, he takes a fatherly curiosity in Billie (Zolee Griggs), a foster-home runaway who’s additionally 15. He prevents her getting in hassle for shoplifting, securing a motel room so she’ll be off the streets he’s all too conscious are unsafe. But Billie is quickly kidnapped from that short-term haven, presumably by intercourse traffickers, and it doesn’t take Cuda lengthy to determine that the perps are very probably tied to his personal employer.
That is the sort of film that decries exploitation of the harmless whereas nonetheless giving us many a lurid eyeful of barely-clad babes in strip golf equipment, kinky intercourse dungeons, and so on. Much more basically problematic is our having to swallow that Cuda — aka “The Barracuda” — is a famously savage enforcer who duly lays waste to quite a few miscreants right here, but someway now feels compelled to danger all for one wide-eyed youth. Did it not happen to him earlier than that Estelle’s enterprises run on the gasoline of such victimization? It’s someway past the script’s scope to acknowledge any contradiction, or evolution, in his habits. He’s only a good unhealthy man, that’s all.
Although it stings a bit to see him thus wasted so quickly after distinctive, range-stretching turns in films like “Official Competitors” and “Ache and Glory,” Banderas does convey dignity and gravitas to a task that may’ve simply lent itself to picket machismo postures. If he can’t enhance the fabric, a minimum of his presence helps soft-pedal its banality. Saddled with among the worst dialogue, Bosworth lends her villainess a inventory honey-voiced duplicity that’s one-note till Estelle’s florid exit scene. Decked out in a black vamp wig, that character supplies disappointingly scant alternative to an adept performer who simply limned myriad layers of ambiguity in each “Home of Darkness” and “The Immaculate Room.”
A 3rd lead of types is Mojean Aria, as a rootless younger streetfighter who turns into Cuda’s skilled protégé. The truth that this determine is named “Stray” tells you simply how a lot thought went into the writing, an absence this gifted Australian actor can’t do a lot to flesh out. Supporting elements are competently stuffed, a couple of uneven efforts being from personnel drafted from the worlds of modeling, hip-hop, “web movie star” and so forth.
“The Enforcer” will get by on neon-noir model for its first hour or so, DP Callan Inexperienced’s widescreen photographs and different design contributions laying on “scorching” colours to attractively convey a mostly-nocturnal Miami taste. (Their success is underlined by the viewer’s shock when closing credit reveal this film was really shot in Thessaloniki, Greece.) Our bodies pile excessive in a climactic 20 minutes that reveal Hughes has a good aptitude for staging motion, even when some occasions actually pressure credulity. Editors Damian Gomez and Mattias Morheden’s easy pacing makes for a simple if not notably tense or thrilling watch all through.
However the tragic dimension the movie goals for — not helped by its opening with a significant spoiler of issues to return — can’t be realized with so little depth to attract on. Reaching for the grandiose, it by no means grasps something past the generic.
Display Media is opening “The Enforcer” (to not be confused with a number of others of the identical title, notably Clint Eastwood’s 1976 Soiled Harry entry) on 10 U.S. screens on Sept. 23, simultaneous with VOD launch.
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