★½
“Someone should go Black to basics.”
This originally was going to be included in my preview for the year, since it showed up in the IMDb with a release date of January 7, 2020. But on Googling, I found it already had seeped out on Tubi, a free movie channel. At time of writing, this would appear to be the first review written about it anywhere, though it should be considered less a preview than a dire advance warning. Indeed, I could condense the whole thing into one word: “Don’t.” For a more pedestrian, poorly-executed excuse for an action film, you’d be hard pushed to find. Right down to the initials of its lead character and the tag-line on the poster (right), this possesses aspirations it fails miserably to achieve. On the plus side, 2020 can really only go up from here.
Jade Black (Burgess) is a globe-trotting agent, working for a clandestine department of the US government under her boss, Malcolm (Flack). Initially tasked with bringing a scientist in from Italy, that mission goes pear-shaped, and the target killed. His laptop survives, and opens the door to a looming plot. He was working on a biological weapon known as “Juliet”, triggered by chemicals the body releases during sex. The shadowy Darrian group are plotting to use this, and the related antidote, for… the usual nefarious purposes in which shadowy groups in C-grade movies engage, including the release of Juliet at a political fundraiser. Front and center in opposition to Jade is Darrian operative Elle (Franklin), another former acolyte of Malcolm. Like Jade, she was rescued by him from sex traffickers as a teenager. Only, in Elle’s case, the psychological damage suffered was too great to overcome, and she went rogue instead.
The above actually sounds kinda interesting – certainly, considerably more so than it is in execution. Part of the problem is the resources are incapable of delivering anything the script asks of them. “Italy” for example, appears entirely depicted by the scientist using an espresso maker. There’s not even any token stock-footage of Rome. When your film is shot entirely in Oklahoma, why mention Italy at all? This kind of ludicrous over-reach peppers the whole movie, considering it can only depict Malcolm’s office by tacking a couple of maps to the wall of a generic room. Spears’ direction is also terrible, though it may be more of an editorial issue. Both individual shots and entire scenes appear to have been cut with a blunt butter-knife, ending too soon or going on too long.
There’s absolutely no rhythm or pacing, with the film lurching and juddering from one moment to the next, and the players exchange one-liners that are less groan-worthy than induce actual nausea. It rapidly becomes painful to watch, despite the best efforts of the cast, who aren’t as relentlessly terrible as the direction or writing. Franklin comes out best, sinking her teeth effectively into her bad-girl role. But you could have had Meryl Streep in this, and she would have been unable to salvage it.
Dir: Terry Spears
Star: Katie Burgess, Sidney Flack, Connie Franklin, Taylor Reich