On this week’s edition of Direct to DVD Dissection, profiles a movie that serves as a playbook on what NOT to do with a serious subject, with the action movie CHAINED: CODE 207
Released May 15th, 2012
The Story:
An Army Ranger returns home after an incident dealing with sex traffickers. After he’s dismissed, he returns home and reunites with his wife. However, the slavers find him and kidnap his wife. This leads to the soldier to go after them, and get his wife back, by any means necessary.
The Cast:
TINO STRUCKMANN as Mack, an Army Ranger who has a little breakdown in Europe while raiding a slaver hideout, which leads to his wife getting captured and him leading the rescue. Born in denmark and a 10 year veteran of the Army, Tino has worked on some several smaller budgeted movies like RED ROSE OF NORMANDY and BROTHER’S WAR.
JACK DIMICH as Savage, the ringleader of the slaver organization, who goes after Mack when he and his Rangers disrupt their operations in Europe. As well as also appearing in the movies RED ROSE OF NORMANDY and BROTHER’S WAR, he’s made several other one-off appearances on TV series like CASTLE, BURN NOTICE, CHUCK, and CSI.
TIFFANY ANN HUGHES as Tiffany, Mack’s wife, kidnapped by slavers and used as bait for Mack. This was Tiffany’s first work in a movie, but has worked on other films, like MY DOG’S CHRISTMAS MIRACLE, MAC & DEVIN GO TO HIGH SCHOOL, and GABE THE CUPID DOG, all under the roles of “Girl”.
CHASE STEVENS as Otto, one of Savage’s goons, and lead henchman. While this is his first movie, he does have some experience being in front of a camera, as he is best known in pro wrestling circles for being in the tag team “The Naturals” in TNA Wrestling for several years.
The Dissection:
This movie goes so wrong. So very, very wrong.
First off, a mention about the story. The film is like a hybrid of TAKEN (plot about the sex trade, and a man with special skills from the government going to war against baddies who have ki9dnapped a loved one) and THE MARINE (an army soldier who breaks rules during a mission, is sent home to his blond love interest, and has trouble adapting back to civilian life, until said love interest is kidnapped by the baddies and the soldier must use his skills to rescue her.)
Mack (Tino Struckmann) doing battle with henchman Sherman (Tommy "Crimson" Mercer)
Now, generally, that movie sounds like a decent flick. However, a lot of different components affect it. The movie is of two minds on how to do a movie like this. The opening gives us, with minor grammar errors, info on how 4 million women are kidnapped and sold into slavery each year.The film treats the issue dead serious, but then shows the movie villains, who are all cartoonishly evil over how they love to kidnap women and steal their organs and attempt to rape them. The movie tries to lighten the mood, as to make it work with the action movie motiff, but it ends up just being stupid.
Speaking of the acting, it’s pretty bad. The lead actor works well with the action scenes and is believable as an action lead. However, the script calls for him to have these emotional scenes and this struggle over his military time and issues with what he saw with the slavers,something this actor can’t pull off. Struckmann keeps on the same face in most of the picture, which could work if this was a shoot em up whiz bang fun action film, but not when you’re trying to add this kind of depth to the character.
As mentioned, the villains themselves are all very over the top cartoonish. The female villain feels like a low rent Baroness from GI JOE mixed with an ILSA Nazis exploitation movie, where she tries to look sexy forcing herself on the female prisoners and wearing tight leather clothing, barking out orders and such, but with no impact at all to it. The movie also features some wrestlers, not only the aforementioned Chase Stevens, but also Tommy Mercer (aka TNA’s “Crimson”). Both parts, along with every other henchmen, is just generic bad guy dialog that you would probably hear while pouncing on them as Batman in ARKHAM CITY. Even the head villain, Savage, is just kind of there, ordering troops and talking all evil with no real force behind him.
However, the worst has got to be the wife, Tiffany. The movie can’t decide if it wants her to be the damsel in distress of Mack’s fellow partner in badassery. One minute, she’s caving in a guy’s head with a rocket launcher, the next she’s yelling at Mack to save her. She shoots a guy who has Mack choked up, the next she’s whining about wanting to leave. The fact that the actress has a lot of lines, but a horrible voice makes it even worse.
"no redeeming qualities about this movie"
As for the production values, they’re lower than most Syfy original movies. The camera work is bland, mostly just stuck in one area for dialog moments and some action scenes. The camera work even backfires during actions scenes, with bad camera placement damaging the action scenes. The look of the film is toned down and washed out thanks to the films use of Super 16MM film. The locations look generic and it’s all very paint by numbers production.
Finally, this movie commits the ultimate sin of Direct to DVD Dissection: it’s basically bare bones. A trailer, few trailers for other films from the company, and that’s it. It’s not only an issue for DVD longevity, but it also damages one of the selling points of the movie. The end of the film has a blurb that a portion of the film goes to victim’s of violence and to women’s shelters. You can pick up the DVD for between 15-25 bucks, but why bother? Not only isn’t there anything else to the DVD to watch, it’s not even worth much on it’s own to justify even 1.28 at a Redbox kiosk. I applaud the movie for the attempt, but it was pretty much all for nothing in the end.
The Verdict:
It’s a badly acted, badly written, badly executed movie with a message that gets badly mangled in the process and takes the movie part with it. There’s no redeeming qualities about this movie. I almost don’t want to completely crap on this movie, cause it was intended with the best of intentions, but as the old saying goes “The Road to hell is paved with the best intentions”. Plus, if you wanted to donate your money to an organization, just do that, instead of going out and checking this film out. you don’t need to expose yourself to this.
DOA. Dead on Arrival.