BAD SAMARITAN. (2018) DIRECTED AND CO-PRODUCED BY DEAN DEVLIN. STARRING DAVID TENNANT, ROBERT SHEEHAN, CARLITO OLIVERO, KERRY CONDON AND JACQUELINE BYERS.
REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©
'You are beyond correction.'
'Wow, it really pays to be a complete arsehole.'
'You don't buy a lock unless you've got shit to hide.'
'He's trying to destroy my life in a million different ways.'
'Derek, that's somebody's little girl. What if it was your sister?'
'I'm never again stealing so much as a piece of gum for the rest of my life.'
'You know, the perfect score. One so big you need never do another one again.'
'You know why you're not in their stupid little jail right now? It's because you're in mine. I will correct you.'
BAD SAMARITAN releases in cinemas on 24th August, courtesy of Signature Entertainment.
This is a pretty nifty home invasion thriller that held my attention really well for about the first ninety minutes. I started to droop around this point, which tells me that chopping twenty minutes off the running time of one hundred and ten minutes might have been a good thing.
Hearththrob-for-the-Millenium David Tennant stars here as a really evil bad guy, as opposed to a baddie who can be redeemed. There ain't no redeeming this bad guy. Even Satan himself might think twice about letting this guy in to his underground realm where, if Father Ted's to be believed, you get red-hot pokers shoved up your arse for all eternity. I bet there are some Earthlings who pay good money for that kind of thing while they're still alive, lol.
Anyway, Sean Falco- cool name- is the good guy here and the titular 'Bad Samaritan.' His name is probably the only cool thing about him as, overall, he's a bit of a loser. And guess what? He's feckin' Oirish. The loser here is Oirish. I hate the way that happens so often in films.
Just in case you weren't too clear as to his nationality, he's got an Oirish flag hanging up in his gaff, riotously curly badly-behaved Oirish hair and an Oirish accent that seems authentic, so maybe the actor playing him is actually Oirish. (Just checked, he's Oirish all right!)
Unlike the two lads in the film THE BOONDOCK SAINTS, who were playing two criminal Oirish brothers when they were no more Oirish than Nelson Mandela. Why do petty crimmos in the movies always have to be Oirish? Gives us a bad name, so it does, be the hokies and so forth.
Anyway, right, Sean Falco is Oirish- did I mention that?- and came from Ireland to Portland, Oregon when his Ma married an American fella. He likes taking photos of his girlfriend's titties but then, what guy doesn't?
I suppose he could have a career as a pornographer but instead he works as a car-parker outside Nino's upmarket restaurant. They call it 'valeting' but it's really just parking cars. His partner in the car-parking business is another big winner just like himself called Derek. Together they operate what seems like the riskiest- but quite ingenious- scam ever invented.
Here's what they do, right, the pair of dopey rapscallions. Customer gives 'em their big posh car to park in the restaurant's parking-lot. Instead of earning an honest buck just doing that, they get the car's sat-nav to bring them to the customer's big fancy rich-people house, which they then illegally enter and burgle. They then return the car and Bob's your Uncle. Nifty, huh?
There's so much that could go wrong. So much circumstantial stuff that could happen. Like, what if the diner needs to get something from his car during his meal and finds his car's missing? You'd have to really enjoy taking risks to get a kick out of this kind of thing.
Any-hoo, one night it's David Tennant as a diner with the unlikely-sounding name of Cale Erendreich who rocks up to Nino's Restaurant in his Maserati. Posh, eh? He's a complete asshole to both Sean and Derek so Sean has no compunction at all about robbing his rich ass.
Cale (Erendreich is much too cumbersome to keep repeating!) lives in a grey-chrome-and-steel fortress of a house where everything from turning on the lights to activating the kitchen gadgets can be achieved from afar with his super-phone or by depressing his car-key fob thingy. These things are bleedin' marvellous. They do everything but sing the national anthem while giving you a blowjob, lol. They haven't quite worked out how to get 'em to sing the national anthem yet...
There are no curtains or knick-knacks and the place looks like a terrifyingly sterile show-house where no-one lives. It's the kind of place where a super-rich single guy would live. If he brought a woman back to the gaff for sex, he'd probably be the kind of guy who would insist that she have a shower before he touched her. And I bet he'd be violently ill if she hadn't shaved off every single pube and sanded herself completely flat and bare down there, lol.
I couldn't live in a house like that. It'd make me feel way too uncomfortable, like I couldn't be myself. I like a nice bit of homely clutter around me, like my books and CDs and movie memorabilia and the little hamsters chewing up the place. They're great. They destroy the bits of the house my kids missed, lol.
To continue, Sean the curly-headed Oirish gobshite is super-impressed by Cale's rich-guy set-up. He's thrilled when he discovers a new and unused credit card that he and Derek can use to buy a ton of cool shit. Waste it on Playstation games and weed, in other words.
But Sean, the curly-headed twat that he is, discovers something else in Cale's Fort Knox of a house that he wasn't expecting to see. When he realises its dreadful implications, he calls the police. When they refuse to take him seriously, Sean decides to take matters into his own hands. And that's when the psychopathic Cale Erendreich realises that he's been rumbled...
There begins now a game of cat-and-mouse between the two male leads that Cale seems destined to win. He's shockingly violent- look what he does to Sean's girlfriend Riley!- and he always seems to be ten steps ahead of his dozey opponent. He says crazy-sounding things like:
'Out of chaos comes order. I define the chaos. I create the order, not you, not him, understand?'
Cale is a convincing psychopath, but I have a few issues with the film. It's about twenty minutes too long for a kick-off, as I said initially. But also, we never really get to understand what it is he wants from the girl.
Like, what category of sexual psychopath is he? Or is it even sex that he wants, or just a fanatical feeling of control? Is he even capable of having sex with her? His brief bit of back-story is scrappy and feels very tacked-on. It needs beefing-up big-time.
Also, I think I lost interest around the bit where the bomb explosion came in. It was so unnecessary. I was annoyed they stuck it in. It kind of ruined the film for me with its over-the-top unbelievability. What happens to Sean's parents is also unbelievable. A perfectly good exciting thriller was slightly weakened by the film-makers trying to cram too much action in. Happens all the thing, this kind of thing. 'Spretty common.
Ah well. I did learn a lotta useful stuff from the film. If you witness a crime, don't bother reporting it to the regular cops because they won't believe a word out of your mouth. Do, on the other hand, take your complaint to a tough, frighteningly competent-looking female member of the FBI.
She will cross-reference your humble crime with a million similar-sounding crimes and, before you can say 'it's turned out nice again!', you'll be hurtling your way alongside the FBI to a deserted farmhouse in the middle of nowhere where the biggest serial killer snatch since Buffalo Bill in THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS is about to go down.
I like the FBI. They seem nice and sensible. I might even tell them one day about the woman in my neighbour's basement, the one with the mask on who's always crying all the time, probably because she's chained to the wall and he only visits her every other day. And she's not the first one he's had down there either.
This seems like the kind of thing the FBI might take an active interest in. Not like those lazy regular cops. You know, I wouldn't be surprised if they turn people away because they just don't fancy doing the bloody paperwork...
One bad night - one bad decision - can haunt you forever.
Misfits and Mute star Robert Sheehan goes up against Jessica Jones and Doctor Who’s David Tennant, here on sensationally nasty form, in a white-knuckle home invasion thriller from the producers of Independence Day.
Key talent:
David Tennant (Doctor Who, Broadchurch, Fright Night)
Robert Sheehan (Fortitude, Misfits)
Kerry Condon (Three Billboards, Better Call Saul)
Carlito Olivero (Blood Heist)
Brandon Boyce (Writer, Apt Pupil, Wicker Park)
Dean Devlin (Director, Leverage, Geostorm; producer Independence Day)
Robert Sheehan (Fortitude, Misfits)
Kerry Condon (Three Billboards, Better Call Saul)
Carlito Olivero (Blood Heist)
Brandon Boyce (Writer, Apt Pupil, Wicker Park)
Dean Devlin (Director, Leverage, Geostorm; producer Independence Day)
BAD SAMARITAN releases in cinemas on 24th August, courtesy of Signature Entertainment.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY OF SANDRA HARRIS.
Sandra Harris is a Dublin-based novelist, film blogger, poet and book-and-movie reviewer. She has studied Creative Writing and Film-Making. She has published a number of e-books on the following topics: horror film reviews, multi-genre film reviews, womens' fiction, erotic fiction, erotic horror fiction and erotic poetry. Several new books are currently in the pipeline. You can browse or buy any of Sandra's books by following the link below straight to her Amazon Author Page:
http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B015GDE5RO
You can contact Sandra at:
http://sandrafirstruleoffilmclubharris.wordpress.com
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