Blu-ray Review: Traffik (2018)

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With her beaming smile and laid back style, Paula Patton has brightened up countless films over the years as a reliable ensemble player. Whether wielding her charm like a weapon in Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol, bringing out her inner diva in Just Wright, or helping to ensure that Swing Vote didn't take itself too seriously by marrying relationship and political comedy, Patton's been long overdue for not only a lead role but a good one. Needless to say, it's easy to see why she's turned to producing to start generating her own material.

Moving into more serious territory in her second feature film as a double hyphenate following Bille Woodruff's 2016 romantic comedy The Perfect Match, producer and star Patton stars as Brea in writer/director Deon Taylor's sex-trafficking thriller, Traffik.

A journalist at a personal and professional crossroads, while on a romantic weekend getaway with her boyfriend John (Omar Epps), Brea is literally handed the investigative story of a lifetime after a young woman drops her captor's satellite phone in her bag.

Ringing out in the night just as the movie had started to stall following the arrival of the couple's annoying friends (played by Laz Alonso and Roselyn Sanchez), rather than use this terrific hook and Hitchcockian MacGuffin in one to help get the film back on track, Traffik puts it in neutral, opting instead to take the easy way out.

Surrounded by the same motorcycle gang that Brea and John had already had a run in with earlier in the movie, in stark contrast to the film's tagline of “Refuse To Be A Victim,” the film quickly loses its senses, ultimately turning its bland characters into veritable horror movie prey for the next two acts as they try to run, hide, fight, and get help.

Using her looks first as visual eye candy and then later as the subject of a predatory male gaze, although Patton tries her best to transcend yet another one-dimensional role, Taylor gives in far too quickly. By placing her character in increasing levels of jeopardy to try and hold the audience's interest for more than a single scene, Taylor seemingly forgets the crusading journalist he’d introduced us to in act one.

An exploitative anti-exploitation picture complete with shocking real-world statistics as well as the vague claim that it was inspired by true events, in spite of its best intentions, Traffik never rises above the combination of Lifetime Original Movie and (thankfully) gore free '80s B-movie horror.

Like a gun we see in the first act that's bound to go off later on, although the classic dream car that Mike built for Brea helps them escape the relentless bikers early on, we can't help but wonder how much better Traffik could've been if it had circled back to the car and turned into a Breakdown, Duel, or even Kidnap style suspenseful road movie.

Similarly, had Patton and Taylor really wanted to create a gritty thriller about the under-reported world of sex-trafficking in the United States (and abroad), they could've followed through on the classic horror movie trope that finds an anonymous woman abducted at the start of the film.

Instead of passing off the phone to strangers, Traffik might have been more genuine had the story been told from the point-of-view of the victim as she tried to get away from her captors or had Patton been able to fight along with her side by side.

Well shot by a man who knows how to use night scenes to his advantage in the form of L.A. Confidential and Heat cinematographer Dante Spinotti, the Italian cameraman tries his best to add some style to the fledgling material and ratchets up the intensity to the nth degree during a key scene co-starring a fierce Missi Pyle.

And while of course you can't review what might have been, because Taylor's movie starts us down so many different paths before ditching them all, it's easy to see the wide variety of stories that could've been told had Traffik ditched the short stops and changed its route in order to truly go the distance with any one of them.

Text ©2018, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. http://www.filmintuition.com Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.  FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I may have received a review copy or screener link of this title in order to voluntarily decide to evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique. Cookies Notice: This site incorporates tools (including advertiser partners and widgets) that use cookies and may collect some personal information in order to display ads tailored to you etc. Please be advised that neither Film Intuition nor its site owner has any access to this data beyond general site statistics (geographical region etc.) as your privacy is our main concern.

Blu-ray Review: The Lone Ranger (2013)

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The Lone Ranger is a movie of many contradictions. On the one hand it’s so confusing and episodic that if we aren’t careful we’ll get completely lost in the sun-drenched sands of the western desert. Yet at the same time it’s so contrived in its storytelling structure that it’s bookended by a cheesy extended flashback narrative device featuring an older version of Johnny Depp’s Tonto spinning the exact same yarn that’s being unspooled by each sequential flicker of celluloid to a young boy who serves as a stand-in for the audience.

And as annoying as the gimmick is in spoon-feeding the saga to viewers through an on-screen surrogate, because the film was written multiple times by multiple people, there are times when we do find ourselves thankful for the cinematic hand-holding since what we’re ultimately presented with is a meandering, muddled mess of a picture desperately in search of an overall plot – if not a point.

 

Pulling us in multiple directions, The Lone Ranger is bogged down by endless possibilities – often trying and failing to chronicle the conflicts and subplots of more than a dozen of characters at once, all with different genre feels and tones until it becomes ever so obvious that a young boy is the last possible person that should be hearing the tale.

Featuring a colorful cast of characters who seem like they’ve wandered in from entirely different films Purple Rose of Cairo style and entered The Lone Ranger, we’re stunned by the choices made by the writers when faced with some of the decidedly un-Disneyfied players that populate the picture and detract from the original plot.

For within the same hour and in a purported “family film” no less, we encounter a cannibalistic killer who cuts the hearts out of his victims to satisfy his disgusting taste buds, a transvestite villain with a fetish for looking ultra-feminine and a one-legged prostitute who conceals a shotgun in her wooden leg.

Just who exactly the film is “really” supposed to play for in actuality as opposed to on the posters is anyone’s guess as is just what on Earth the film we’re presented has in common with the beloved hero of television and film past from which it’s supposed to have been adapted.

As it turns out, very little indeed as instead of the Jimmy Stewart type of heroic ranger intended by producer Jerry Bruckheimer, we’re given an awkward, not very bright, reluctant and at times cowardly hero who has to be goaded into action.

Given that Armie Hammer isn’t exactly a recognizable name cast-choice, the fact that he plays second fiddle to Johnny Depp isn’t all that surprising but what is surprising is Depp’s bizarre take on Tonto as a Native American with a screw loose and a tragic back-story to boot that has filled him with such guilt that it’s a wonder he can function at all.

An odd portrayal at best from his stilted “Ha, white man,” clichéd style line delivery and fanciful whims that never quite gel with the Buster Keaton persona and sense of ‘20s silent movie pratfall physicality he puts forth in some of the film’s more successful scenes.

An overall ugly film that is definitely unsuitable for casual family viewing, The Lone Ranger’s only saving grace comes in the form of its second – far more successful – bookend device featuring complex action sequences executed by horse and train.

 

While the first one is impressive if a bit short, ultimately it’s just a preview of the brilliance to come in the second and final action sequence of the film – a twenty-minute, all-out, adrenaline pumping blend of bravura action and screwball silent comedy synced to the Lone Ranger theme we know so well.

The expertly choreographed feat is a feast for the ears and eyes, not to mention far more dazzling than anything else not only in Ranger or in other vastly superior action movies during the course of 2013.

It's so good that it makes you mad by how much the rest of the bloated 140 minute movie missed the mark by not matching the remaining 120 minutes to the same pace, tone, spirit, style and humor on display in that sequence.

And against all odds and reason, the formerly must-miss movie becomes a must-see just for that segment alone. An infusion of the goofy fun of 1998’s Zorro remake with the artistry of Buster Keaton’s The General, which most certainly served as a chief inspiration – an argument can be made that that sequence should’ve been trimmed from the picture and released as an Oscar worthy live action short in its own right.

Unfortunately however you can’t just review the film for one part but have to take it as the overall sum of those parts and ultimately Disney’s Lone Ranger is a disaster of epic proportions, especially once you factor in the obscene amount of money gambled on the budget that it justifiably lost at the box office.

Nonetheless, those who have taken a chance on the film in its flawless Blu-ray transfer can take advantage of the handy scene-selection feature to skip the mess and move right to the mini-movie that enthusiasts of the original Ranger were waiting for all along. Hi ho, Silver, and away to the end indeed.     

Text ©2013, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. http://www.filmintuition.com Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.  FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I may have received a review copy of this title in order to evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique.