Chop Chop (2020)

Live can’t come to the door, she’s all tied up.

(2020) Thriller (Gravitas) Atala Arce, Jake Taylor, David Harper, Mikael Mattsson, Jeremy Jordan, James McCabe, Mike Thompson, Nicholas Correnti, Natasha Missick, Lizzie Chaplin (voice), Jazmine Jordan, Theresa Byron, Emily Katter, Paul Syre, Mandy Martino. Directed by Rony Patel

 

Most couples appreciate the quiet evening home alone. Someone cooks dinner, maybe a movie (and microwave popcorn) out on the couch, and then to the bedroom for *ahem* the main course. Sounds like a pretty good night to me.

And that’s what Chuck (Taylor) and Liv (Arce) have in mind. Then, there’s a knock on the door. There’s a guy there named Teddy (Harper), delivering the pizza they ordered. Except, they didn’t order any pizza – Chuck made dinner, so Liv tells Teddy thanks but no thanks, and shuts the door, and goes back into the living room.

And that’s where she finds Teddy waiting for her. “I have abilities,” he says, almost modestly. He also has a bag of bloody severed heads. Now, that’s as promising a beginning for a movie as it gets, thinks I. Sadly, Chop Chop doesn’t quite live up to that early promise.

When Teddy attacks Liv, Chuck comes to the rescue and ends up killing Teddy. However, instead of calling the cops – technically, they were defending themselves which isn’t illegal, even in California – they decide to dispose of the body themselves, calling in some favors from some shady underworld types. When a cop (Jeremy Jordan) stumbles on what’s going on, the couple have to shove him in the trunk as well. And all these underworld sorts are, inexplicably, trying to kill Liv and Chuck. I mean, WTF, right?

Along the way, they meet all manner of killers and fend them off as best they can before they end up being captured and set up for torture…but by that point, you’ll be wondering why you’ve stayed with the movie even this long. The story is told in such an incomprehensible manner that you can be forgiven if you think that the chapter heading for the first scene, Teddy, actually refers to Chuck – it isn’t until a little later that you find out that Teddy was the dead serial killer. The one with abilities…that are never explained, or referred to. And let’s face it, Liv took them pretty much in stride. Do lots of people that she knows have abilities?

Another flaw of the film is that nearly all the action takes place off-camera, or is so brief as to be blink-and-you-missed-it. I’ll give Patel the benefit of the doubt and assume that was for budgetary reasons, but it may well be inexperience, or an attempt to set his thriller apart from the glut of them on the market. I will give him that the concept is solid.

However, he changes tone regularly to an almost maddening degree. The movie starts out as kind of a noir thriller, moves into a romantic comedy at one point, and then shimmies into torture porn at the end before finishing up as…well, that I’ll keep to myself. The really maddening thing is that there is a ton of potential here, but the decisions made by the person sitting in the director’s chair as well as the person at the laptop banging away the script (the same person, by the way) just about guaranteed the movie wouldn’t succeed. I think the movie could have worked as a kind of extreme action version of a noir Nick and Nora Charles-type of thing. That’s a movie I’d love to see – John Wick meets The Thin Man. Hollywood, get on that one, wouldja?

REASONS TO SEE: The concept is an intriguing one.
REASONS TO AVOID: Clumsy storytelling vies with questionable directorial decisions for the most damaging aspect to the film’s success.
FAMILY VALUES: This is plenty of violence and profanity, bloody images, some sexual content, and brief drug use.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: This is the feature film debut for Patel, who was born in India but currently resides in Los Angeles.
BEYOND THE THEATERS: Amazon, AppleTV, Fandango Now, Google Play, Microsoft, Redbox, Vudu, YouTube
CRITICAL MASS: As of 10/27/20: Rotten Tomatoes: 20% positive reviews, Metacritic: No score yet
COMPARISON SHOPPING: Funny Games
FINAL RATING: 5.5/10
NEXT: Day 3 of Six Days of Darkness!

Brake

Stephen Dorff is having a very bad day.

(2012) Suspense (IFC) Stephen Dorff, Chyler Leigh, Tom Berenger, JR Bourne, Kali Rocha, Bobby Tomberlin, King Orba, Pruitt Taylor Vince, Sammy Sheik (voice), Kent Shocknek, Jaylen Moore, Stephen J. Bridgewater, Matthew Pollino, Jason Raphael, Jamie Fishback, Michael Franklin, Marisol James. Directed by Gabe Torres

You just know that when you wake up and you have no idea where you are that you’re in for a crappy day. However, when you discover that you are held prisoner in a Plexiglas cube in the trunk of a car, it just might be something else entirely, as in. Worst. Day. Ever.

Jeremy Reins (Dorff) is having that kind of day. To make things even more ominous, there’s a digital clock that seems to be counting down to something. A voice on a radio accuses him of being a government agent, and a man named Henry (Bourne) is also on that same radio, telling Jeremy he’s in the very same predicament – except that he works for the State Department and they have his family hostage on top of it.

Why are his captors doing this? Because they want the location of something called Roulette, that’s why. As it turns out, that is the code name of the bunker where the President retreats to in time of national emergency. And as it also turns out, Jeremy is in fact a Government agent and one of a select few who knows where Roulette is. And as is turns out yet again, his captors are willing to do just about anything to get that information – be it to torture Jeremy with swarms of bees (which Jeremy is allergic to), to kill innocent people and even to kidnap Jeremy’s wife Molly (Leigh) while Jeremy listens in on the radio.

As he is driven around in the trunk of the car, he hears radio reports that Washington is in chaos as multiple targets are hit by terrorist bombs. Jeremy realizes that he is not in the hands of just any terrorist group; they are after the complete and utter destruction of our government and nothing less than a coup d’état will do.

Perhaps one of the drawbacks to this movie is that we’ve seen this kind of thing before. Fortunately, while the spin here is nothing remarkable, the people who are both in front of and behind the cameras are extremely competent at what they do. Torres, who to this point had mainly television credits on his resume, is adept at keeping the tension at high levels. The audience is literally squirming in their easy chairs, popcorn and soda forgotten as they grow mesmerized with the events unfolding.

Dorff is more often cast as the villain and those are roles he does very well but on this occasion he gets to not only be the leading man but he is literally the only face we see for about two thirds of the movie. It’s a rigorous, demanding task for the actor but one sometimes forgets that Dorff is really good at what he does. He is more than up to the challenge.

The ending unfortunately doesn’t live up to the rest of the film. There are a couple of twists – one you may or may not see coming, one you probably will. Also, there are only so many things you can do with a guy locked in the trunk of the car. We don’t see any other characters for the most part – for good reason as it turns out – and while I like the idea of feeling Jeremy’s isolation and helplessness, it can get frustrating for the audience in the latter stages of the film.

I actually found this to be a solid, entertaining thriller, one which I suspect was meant to go direct-to-video but was given an excuse-me theatrical release for reasons I can’t even fathom; it probably cost the distributor more to do that than just go right to the home video/VOD route. Still, don’t let that keep you from giving this one a shot. As thrillers go, it’s as good as most of the stuff that got full theatrical runs with multi-million dollar marketing campaigns. This one deserved both.

WHY RENT THIS: Surprisingly well done, with a good eye towards keeping the tension high. Dorff rarely gets to play a heroic character and does pretty well at it.

WHY RENT SOMETHING ELSE: Starts to feel stale towards the end and the ending is a bit of a letdown.

FAMILY VALUES: Lots of bad words (you’d swear too if you were locked in a trunk) and scenes of torture both mental and physical.

TRIVIAL PURSUIT: The movie was primarily filmed in North Hollywood, subbing for Washington DC.

NOTABLE HOME VIDEO EXTRAS: There’s a music video.

BOX OFFICE PERFORMANCE: $4,876 on an unknown production budget.

COMPARISON SHOPPING: Buried

FINAL RATING: 6.5/10

NEXT: Toy Story 2