★½
“Doctor in the house.”
I guess some credit is due here for going against type, at least. Molly Reese (Stack) is not your typical vigilante. She’s actually a doctor who works in an emergency room, and suffers a debilitating mental blow when her husband and daughter are both killed in an accident. She subsequently goes to a very dark place psychologically, telling her therapist she has thoughts about killing people. This is particularly unfortunate, after she is unable to save a local mob-boss, and his gang decide she is to blame. For Molly gets to put all those murderous impulses into action, under the guise of self-defense, and then proceeds to take the fight to the gangsters, all the while becoming increasingly unstable.
It’s an interesting concept, and the potential is there: a doctor using her medical skills in ways of which the Hippocratic Oath would not approve. As noted, she doesn’t initially look like a crazed vigilante, and that might have been leveraged to good effect. However, the execution here is flat-out terrible, in a variety of ways. Stack as the protagonist isn’t particularly one of them, though her descent into insanity is largely depicted by Molly pulling increasingly deranged faces, and steadily worse hair-styles. It’s everything else. For example, the gangsters, who could not be a more shallow cliche of Italians if they tried. We know they are gangsters, because the restaurant where they hang out plays Nessun Dorma on a loop, I kid you not.
Their competence leaves a huge amount to be desired too, perpetually losing fights – both gun and hand-to-hand – against a middle-aged physician with no previous experience. This makes them largely useless as villains, since they’re no threat. Though Mikey (Rosing), the one mostly in charge of hunting Molly, at least looks the part, ponytail and all. However, the actual battles are terribly staged, such as a lengthy gun-battle in a bowling alley, where none of the bullets seems to hit anything at all. There’s another member of the gang, Vito (Zambrano), who seems to have a thing for Molly. Don’t worry, since this proves to be of no significance. It’s all unfocused and poorly structured, up until an ending so abrupt, it suggests everyone involved suddenly realized they’d made a terrible mistake.
Probably the worst thing in the movie though, is Mollie’s neighbour, David (Tyler). I’m not sure if this depiction of a mentally-challenged individual was intended to provide humourous relief. If there’s blackface and brownface, is there such a thing as “retardface”, where someone pretends to be intellectually disabled for comedic purposes? Even if Tyler is genuinely like that (doubtful), it’s horribly exploitative, and would be among the most cringe-inducing portrayals of the year. It sums up a severely misbegotten adventure, that might have worked better as a short. It certainly has “Not ready for first feature” written all the way through it. Although for writer-director Siegel, the only way from here is up.
Dir: Artie Siegel
Star: Katelin Stack, Joe Rosing, Frank Zambrano, Vic Tyler