Year of Release: 2019
Director: Matt Angel, Suzanne Coote
Starring: Lulu Wilson, Seann William Scott, Denise Burse, Jill Larson, Michael Sirow, Matt Angel, Aaron Dalla Villa, Courtney Gains, Alison Cimmet, Derek Gaines, Kate Siegel
Genre: Action, Thriller
Score out of ten (whole numbers only): 2
Watch it on Amazon
Synopsis and Review
"Becky" premiered during the pandemic and apparently got enough audience to warrant this sequel, which comes courtesy of directing team Matt Angel and Susanna Coote, who also co-write the story (Matt Angel wrote the script). The film follows the story of Becky, who is now 16 and has been in and out of foster homes since her father was killed by neo-nazis (and her mother died of cancer). She currently rents a room from a lovely lady by the name of Elena, who also allows her to keep her dog (service dog) by the name of Diego. She works in the local diner, and lives a rather calm and under the radar existence. That suffers a bit of a jolt when 3 men come into the diner and start provoking her. She spills hot coffee all over one of them, and they decide to follow her and teach her a lesson. Upon arriving at Elena's house, they beat up Diego, and they're about to do worse to Becky when Elena shows up with a shotgun. They kill Elena, and as Becky is about to retaliate, she hits the wall and passes out. When she comes back to her senses, she notices Diego is gone. She eventually uncovers where those men are stationed. They're in a nearby property owned by a man named Darryl, who is part of a terrorist organization titled "Noble Men". Becky investigates further, as she plans to take them down one by one and get Diego back.
Unlike Joe Wright's "Hanna", "The Wrath of Becky" tries to be more tongue in cheek, cartoonishly violent, positioning Becky as a terminally jaded young woman who has seen everything and suffered everything she has to suffer. And sadly, courtesy of this poorly written film, that seems to be the case. The film has issues with tone, not wanting to be overtly cartoonish, much like Michael Davis did with "Shoot 'Em Up" (it's incredible how many films are unsuccessfully trying to emulate that film's energy, even if that film wasn't that successful to begin with), but also no wanting to be very dramatic which is the tone that Joe Wright adopted in the aforementioned "Hanna", which featured a great central performance by Saoirse Ronan. "The Wrath of Becky" has little motivation for its characters, adding some contrived plot mechanics around national terrorists and assassination plots, inexistent character dimension, and by the time the action sequences come along (if they can even be called that), they're poorly choreographed, with the team resorting to gore in order to avoid boredom. It's a brief film, plagued with nonsensical developments, where most of the cast is just trying to play along. Seann William Scott manages to be the sole saving grace of the film, whereas the talented Kate Siegel has a brief cameo. Lulu Wilson who had interesting performances in "Ouija: Origin of Evil" and "Annabelle: Creation" can't do much to save the film, no matter how much she tries. The production team is underwhelming, though the makeup effects are solidly crafted. Avoid.
0 comments:
Post a Comment