★★
“Lock out while you rock out.”
File this synopsis under technically true: “After the shocking discovery of an unconscious man in a locked unit, the lone employee of a remote storage facility must fight to survive the night against a ruthless gang, dead set on retrieving their precious cargo – at any cost.” I guess the word with which I have the most reason to quibble is probably “fight”. For heroine Laurie Saltair (Fugrman) is more from the Brave Sir Robin school of fighting, if you’ve ever seen Monty Python and the Holy Grail. She’s much more inclined to avoid confrontation than seek it out. Which perhaps making sense when facing a larger, better armed and more experienced enemy. But where’s the fun in that?
The man in question is Clayton (Huston), who is on a gurney having been kidnapped from hospital by Jules (Johnson), who is keen to finish the job. What job is that? Well, you find this out towards the end, when Laurie does, and it certainly upends much of what has gone before, to the point you’d be forgiven for annoyance at the film having perhaps wasted your time. What unfolds is, Laurie rescuing Clayton, and they then have to try and escape the storage facility and/or call for help, while Jules and his men hunt them both. Naturally, neither prove exactly successful, and that’s hos the plot unfolds. Mostly through the maze of passages in the facility, with a brief excursion outside for fresh air.
There’s potential here: imagine a film where the heroine can crack open storage units and use the contents against the villains. This kinda happens here – only in about the dumbest and most implausible way you could imagine. Seriously: of all the things potentially to utilize, this was the way Laurie went? I think it was probably the moment at which the film jumped the shark for me, and it was never able to… I guess, un-jump itself thereafter. I feel a vague sense of loss at this, since the central performance are fine. Fuhrman is an engaging heroine, and Johnson is effective in his role. Weirdly, after non-GWG film Day of Reckoning, it’s the second this week where an ambivalent character coughs up blood. Go figure.
It also felt like Laurie only became pro-active at the end of the movie, when it was necessary for the plot. When it happened, part of me was relieved it had finally happened – it probably just pushed the film over the line for inclusion on this site. However, there was another part of me that wondered where the hell this had come from, because it simply didn’t fit in with Laurie’s passive approach to that point. I may have been somewhat prejudiced by Fuhrman’s track record in Orphan: First Kill, where she’s more aggressive. This definitely needed a heroine along similar lines, although it’s the script, and its inability to unlock the potential, which feels the biggest weakness.
Dir: Andy Tennant
Star: Isabelle Fuhrman, Don Johnson, Jack Huston, James DuMont