Ferocious

Successful actress heads back to her old hometown to exact vengeance on an old employer that did her wrong. A jumbled mess of a movie. Could've been(should've been) done so much better. Amanda Crew is good but given little to work with, not her fault. This movie needed a revised plot with twists and an exciting tempo. I wonder how much the editor left on the cutting room floor, was it worse than what I just watched?

Ferocious is a thriller that takes place in a night club. Not while it's open, but closed. Amanda Crew is back in town (she plays the lead character) to get something back she forgot. Turns out, it's a video tape. Have I seen this before? Yes and no. Despite this having elements from previous films, it plays out in a unique enough way to have kept me interested. There are not a lot of actors in it. Everything is sparse. But that's probably how it should be. Michael Eklund is in it. He's an employee of the bar. He's good (last saw him in The Call). But the real stand out is Kim Coates from Son's of Anarchy. He's so slimy you slide off your chair just watching him. What a good actor. I'm glad they let him have fun with it rather than being just an everyday bad guy. He's fun to watch. I give the movie a 6.5. But since IMDb doesn't let me vote in half number increments, I'll give it a 6. No, a 7

The role Kim Coates has been dying to play, I'm sure. Another bad guy. Joke. But seriously, this isn't the regular bad guy. Coates plays someone much more sinister than usual and he clearly has fun with it. The plot has the lead character (Amanda Crew) return to where she was born to see her parents. She's a famous actress and is doing a hometown appearance. The media is all over her. She plays for the camera. She's good at it. But later, she heads to a night club. She's looking for something and we have to guess what it is. It must be important, or why would she go there. I'll confess that I saw it coming a mile away, but there are enough twists to hold my interest. Some of the dialogue stuck out and bothered me. But other than that, I enjoyed the movie. It's small, with only a few characters. But I like that sort of thing. Where everyone has to use their wits to survive. Directed with appropriate tension and good acting.

Whoo. Spicy. K Coates was born for this role. The other actors have a hard time keeping up, but do pretty well all in all. It's obvious this is a low buck arrangement (to my eyes, anyway), but the filmmaker seems to make the best of it. Dim lighting and sinister music don't hurt. But it's mighty creepy, just in a different way than the conjuring or other thriller/horror out there. This is like being caught in a room with the world's sleaziest man and having to sit on his lap. This is what we're seeing a lot of now, small movies, usually thrillers or horror, some do quite well, others disappear. Not sure what to say about this one. It's good, but it's slow pace may not be to everyone's liking. This is not Speed, nor is it Transporter. But that's not taking anything away from it.

Kim Coates gives a two-for-one stellar performance in the film. Amanda Crew is terrific too, as is Michael Eklund. I found the screenplay well written and very well delivered, making for a relatively fast 93 minutes -- a fine fulfillment of the thriller's vision. Director Robert Cuffley's treatment of the story's monitor-and-mirror motif, definitely 'dark' in tone (much of the film is set in a dimly lit nightclub, after hours) becomes very big on the big screen; if we are paying attention, we recognize this 'monitor' as a mirror (and that any mirror can itself be a "mirage," as much as a monitor can). And to me an upclose- and-personal look at this reflection of archetypical truth, contextualized in clever and at times comical narrative, worth an evening's and a few dollars' investment.