On this edition of Direct to DVD Dissection, a group of mercenaries, a psychic, Eric Roberts, and a Syfy Channel original movie walk into a Redbox kiosk. What do you get? Well, as well as a SPLITTING HEADACHE, you get this week’s movie. A movie where the biggest special effects are from the editing machine.
Oscar Hotel, Foxtrot Uniform Charlie Kilo.
The Story
After losing contact with a clandestine energy research facility, a powerful venture capitalist contracts a private team of elite military operatives to retrieve a physicist who holds the key to an unprecedented alternate energy source.
The Cast
Rich McDonald as Jonathan Gates. A new hire for the Blackjacks mercenary group, a shining star who has a bit of a past and a first mission he will not soon forget.
James C. Burns as Lewis Locke. The veteran, the old soldier, the person in charge of the Blackjacks outfit, who asks for nothing but unquestioning loyalty.
Kristina Anapau as Lisa Westbrook. A psychic who finds herself among a group of mercenaries to investigate the disappearance of a lost doctor of science.
Eric Roberts as Mr. Cromwell. A big boss of the corporate world, a man who finds himself in need of a group to quickly and efficiently tie up a loose end of his…
The Dissection
Right off the bat, this is something you should not really spend money to watch. That’s not (entirely) a view of the movie’s quality, but rather how the whole premise is built. This feels, first and foremost, like a TV miniseries or a one off episode of some spooky TALES FROM THE CRYPT rip off than any kind of film that has a beginning, middle and end plot structure. More to the point, like watching a miniseries where you started on part 3 of 5.
Johnathan Gates (McDonald) at the climax of a breach and clear.
The movie really does tell you nothing about itself. First off, the title doesn’t mean much since the mercs aren’t really SEALS, and the movie prefers to show the name of the group, The Blackjacks, in a big stylish logo over the title, which gets a shot in the intro with standard font. Also, the story does not really reveal how the film goes, since it spends a good half of the 80 minute running time on The Blackjacks preparations for the mission and big attack on a compound, then spend the other half in a low budget version of a creature feature watching the proverbial bodies hit the floor.
The characters in the movie are such caricatures, if you honestly could not get their role within 5 seconds of meeting them, chances are you never seen a form of media before. You know within 5 seconds which person of the Blackjacks group is the silent tough guy, who’s the old veteran, who’s British, and who’s the comedic relief. You know who the “good” guys are, who the villains are, who fits in the formula for a film like this within one scene. There’s a “femme fatale” character in the movie introduced via shower scene and nudity. If you’re been alive more than this movie’s been released, you should know what these characters are before a line of dialog is said.
You know what, though? That could all have been forgiven, passing as standard action schlock, and yet the movie commits the ULTIMATE sin. Because of the camerawork, the film is virtually UNWATCHABLE. The quote about the editing machine being the biggest special effect in this movie was not hyperbole. The film, for 90% of it, has two main special effects. The first one it has is a shaky camera, that serves to make the movie look frantic during action scenes, mark scene transitions, and even serve as a substitute monster for a majority of it via point of view shots and coupling with music stingers for “gore shots”, which tend to more often than not show blood splatters on a wall. The second special effect involves editing in and out frames, and splicing in close up blood squirting footage during shooting scenes. Only very, VERY late in the film does it feature some mangled bodies and 30 seconds of CG monster, so for the most part it’s just those two things, and they really make it a pain to sit through. There’s no moment for your eyes to rest and focus, as the film just jumps and moves all over. It makes sitting through a movie like this much worse than it should.
"I couldn't help noticing you weren't having sex with me."
And even with all that, even if you can let those go all the way til the end, there’s no real satisfying solution here. Short of a kind of interesting credits song, it’s not well explained or even bothers to go into details in what the viewer just saw.
Extras wise, aside from trailers for itself and some other films from Lionsgate, there’s a making of video that talks about the production of the film, mostly detailing the big shoot out in the film. There’s also English and Spanish subtitles.
The Verdict
The movie is a bit of a amalgam of different genres, with not much behind it in terms of power and efficiency. The biggest issue, bar none, is the camera work. This COULD work as a action/horror TV show, with the same kind of framework here and better camera work, but this isn’t a TV show. It’s a movie, a movie you should probably skip, or maybe wait til it hits Netflix or some movie channel you have.