(Movies fail at the box office, and many more fail to even find release into theaters. When one of these dead on arrival titles arrives on disc they go under the knife of the forensic video-examiner, all in the hope of determining the causes of death in the marketplace. Be forewarned any who wish to see the film – this piece is entirely a SPOILER.)
Decisions made in an attempt to salvage a doomed production always fascinate me. Example; this misfire was once entitled simply
DECEPTION. I would love to see the machinations behind the expansion of things to
ABSOLUTE DECEPTION. “We may lose business due to people fearing the deception onscreen is incomplete.” – “What if people do not buy the concept the central characters have their lives altered by a deception that is somehow lacking in its totality?!” This focus on the mundane explains how a weak story, limp action, and a bored Cuba Gooding Jr. managed to remain in the final cut.
This was directed by Australian Brian Trenchard-Smith, a man with a long resume once touted by Quentin Tarantino, no less. He also has directed
Leprechaun 3, and
Leprechaun 4: In Space, to give you a rounded perspective. Here he places Gooding Jr. as an FBI agent, teams him with a reporter who has more skills than an FBI agent, and gives them a script on par with decades old television police dramas. Let’s toss this unthrilling disc onto the slab and see why it never had heartbeat.
00:01:44 Ruptured Visual
After establishing that we are in the Gold Coast, Australia we cut to night to see Cuba Gooding who is John Nelson, in a restaurant, ordering a beer in a coffee-brown leather jacket. I feel like I’m in an episode of a 1970’s detective show.
00:02:22 Arrested Physics
Cuba takes a desperate call from a man named Archer, moored on his yacht, so he sprints from the table and races down the docks. (Okay, maybe this feels like an episode from
RIPTIDE). He arrives just as Archer is carted off by two masked men. Cuba announces he is from the FBI and gunshots break out. Machine gun fire explodes around Gooding, but when the film cuts to the gunman he is only holding a pistol.
00:03:30 Invasive Pathos
Held back by gunfire Gooding watches as Archer is loaded into a Zodiac boat and as they speed off he is shot. Then on the dock he locates a severed finger.
INTRIGUE!
00:04:09 Weakened Impulse
Running the fingerprint through a criminal database Gooding finds out Archer also has a New York driver’s license under a different name, Miles Scott. This means Cuba ran the background check on the guy he knew, and even had been confirmed to be Archer. That, dear readers, is intrepid work.
00:04:49 Septic Introduction
Cut to New York and the offices of
NY SPYGLASS Magazine where we meet investigative reporter Rebecca Scott, played by Emmanuelle Vaugier . She is positioned as one of those fearless activist type journalists. Her reed-thin body and painted on eyebrows means she could also be positioned as one of those robots used to sell Svedka Vodka.
00:07:49 Elevated Foreshadow Levels
John drops in on Rebecca to break the news that her husband Miles Scott has died. She’s nonplussed, mostly because she says he died 2 years ago. I’m sure the fact that her latest story exposed an Australian business tycoon’s illegalities, and the fact that Miles had been an informant for the FBI in Australia are completely independent coincidences.
00:12:31 Depleted Character Concentration
Rebecca investigates one of her husband’s hidden identities and finds he has remarried. This is to show off her investigative skills however the reality is she makes this discovery two years later than needed.
00:14:25 Weakened Impulse
There needs to be some sort of justification to have Cuba Gooding Jr. toddling around the shores of Australia. The tycoon Rebecca exposed, Ronald Osterberg, is placed on house arrest awaiting extradition to the U.S. for securities fraud, and John had been using Archer as an inside informant of Osterberg’s empire. There, all the justification you need.
00:16:55 Exploratory Story Incision
Rebecca travels to Australia and drops in on the police headquarters. She coolly ambles into a room filled with evidence linking her ex-husband to the tycoon Osterberg. She is interrupted by Chief Inspector Hendricks, who happens to be working with John. Damn, all the pieces have neatly fallen into place -- and the first act is not even over!
00:17:51 Visual Adrenal Infusion
One thing a tepid, molasses-paced thriller could use is some CheeseCake shots. John drops in on Rebecca’s hotel and we get a few distractions, for now.
00:20:47 Cauterized Plot Cavity
Rebecca proposes working together with John, and like Hendricks he tells her explicitly she better not interfere with the investigation. In her bungalow Rebecca digs further into her ex-husband’s past. It sure is convenient for an investigative reporter to ferret information for a story by using a website called www.RESTRICTED ACCESS SEARCH.com.
00:24:29 Blunt-Force Dialogue
Becky decides to drop in on the woman Miles had married. Mrs. Archer is surprisingly hospitable, but then turns bitchy for no discernable reason.
REBECCA:
Was he good to you?
BRIGETTE ARCHER:
Of course, he loved me. He bought me nice things, took me nice places [sic]
– and he was always “hot for it”.
00:27:15 Ruptured Visual
On the way to Brigette’s home Becky was followed. Then when leaving she nearly backs into the same truck, and the hotshot investigative reporter never notices the vehicle in her rear view mirror. The ponderous chase scene ends with the bad guy speeding off because Becky whips out her cell phone to take his picture.
00:32:29 Iatrogenic Direction
Movies such as this subsist on padding, so now minutes of screen time are burned. First we get a fruitless scene of Becky stalked while taking a shower, (it was just a dream!). Next she wakes to investigate a noise in her hotel suite. Nothing occurs, but we get close-ups of her panties while she checks things out.
00:35:16 Cranial Atrophy
Despite always being told not to investigate and go away Rebecca happens to meet John on the docks the next day and they investigate together. John lets her in on how Miles/Archer has been a white collar grifter for Osterberg, skimming profits from illegal business practices. Miles had been secretly stashing his gains – save for the massive ornate yacht they are about to investigate.
00:38:37 Adverse Activity
Because he heard a thumping noise John feels justified to board the yacht. He is promptly knocked unconscious in the lower cabin. Rebecca then sees the same man who tried running her off the road. Her recognition was helped by him wearing the exact same outfit more than a full day later.
00:44:55 Weakened Impulse
Instead of fleeing and trying to get help Becky decides to hide under a green tarp, visible in the consol of an open-fisherman boat, 50 feet away.
00:45:09 Fiscal Laceration
John and Becky GO BACK onto the yacht. Next she says,
”You know, you probably saved my life.”. Uh, exactly how, Becks? He was out cold on the floor, you hid in a boat, and the guy chasing you fled from the cops – whom you called yourself.
While flirting in the engine room the pair discovers a bomb, with seconds before detonation. Now look, I get it; blowing up a million-dollar yacht was not in the budget. But seriously, you could not pop for visual effects a few steps higher than Photo Shop level graphics?
00:48:47 Continuity Failure
After a frustrating meeting with Osterberg Rebecca suggests calming Nelson down by going for lunch to have some wine. Not ten seconds later they are shown in a café, sipping coffee.
00:53:02 Visual adrenal Infusion
Bridgette Archer has a break-in at night and two intruders drown her in the pool. This did nothing for the plot, but extended scenes of her in her nightgown were helpful in moving the story forward.
00:54:32 Cliché’ Malignancy
Yea, I’m starting to get that
Riptide feeling again, as Rebecca shows up at her husband’s former business office with her custom lock-picking tool kit.
00:57:18 Cauterized Plot Cavity
Becky accidently discovers Miles had another office in the same building so she lock-picks her way in there as well. She finds a computer and manages to log onto it using a password cracking program she keeps on a flash drive in her purse. This reporter is beginning to border on super-hero with her myriad skills.
01:01:18 Continuity Failure
While leaving the building a foot chase ensues with the guy who has been pursuing Becky. Minutes later outside a garage she stops to shoot him with pepper spray. In the next frame a truck that had not been there suddenly hits the thug – and not Rebecca – crushing his skull under a tire.
01:04:56 Adverse Activity
News of the death of Bridgette Archer naturally brings both John and Rebecca to the home. When told for at least the one dozenth time that Rebecca has no business being there the next edit shows John and Becks poking around the crime scene wearing latex gloves.
01:07:07 Cauterized Plot Cavity
After locating a safe in the wine cellar John and Rebecca break back into the home that evening. So not only does this film rely on nobody actually keeping Becky out of official police business but she and John have to routinely enter forbidden crime scenes to gather inadmissible evidence.
01:08:22 Technologic Thrombosis
John uses a code breaking device of his own on the safe’s electronic keypad, but the FBI agent uses an ineffectual four-digit scrambler (while Becky’s code-breaker handled many more digits and letters). After hours spent with no success Becks then leans over and inputs her birthday, and that manages to unlock the safe.
01:18:39 Adverse Activity
Osterberg grants Rebecca an exclusive interview, during which Hendricks arrives to arrest the tycoon for the murder of Bridgette Archer. He once again tells Rebecca she should not be there, then after having the house staff cleared out she ONCE AGAIN decides it would be swell to come back and break into Osterberg’s home with John. This time HE uses lock-picking tools.
01:20:37 Collapsed Climax
As they both snoop through Osterberg’s home they hear others come in. Chief Inspector Hendricks is there to find Osterberg’s hidden information to his secret billions in cash. It is without an iota of surprise that we then learn Miles/Archer is still alive, and working with Hendricks to get at the fortune!
01:23:44 Blunt-Force Dialogue
Soon all the baddies get control of John and Becky. They will be killed off for the sake of the billions, however not right away; this now allows our heroic couple to escape. During one tussle Hendricks says to Nelson:
CHIEF INSPECTOR HENDRICKS:
You wanna know what FBI stands for? Fumble, Bumble, Incompetent.
Immediately after John gets the upper hand and shoots Hendricks dead.
01:26:56 Depleted Character Concentration
While John was busy Rebecca gets attacked by a thug. She first knocks him out with a lone golf club found at an outdoor tiki bar. Then she and Miles draw guns on each other, and she shoots her dead husband . . . er, dead.
During a quasi-romantic finale John mentions, “
And how many times did I save your life?”
As I think back the only number I can come up with to his question is, “Zero”.
POST MORTEM
Why is this a misfire? Take a less than compelling plot and drop in two actors who go through the paces, and have their characters go from point-A to point A.1, is my guess. Gooding begins as a cop, and is a cop at the end. Rebecca is a cocky journalist who becomes cockier. The story meanwhile begins as a thriller and ends as mid-season episode of a crime show most would skip past in the box-set compilation.
I wonder if anyone is selling
RIPTIDE discs on eBay...