Review Category: DVD/Blu Ray

A frequent complaint made by fans of cult movies and TV shows is that reboots seems to be the norm these days. For many of us, the creators of our favourite shows got it right first time and a killer combination of nostalgia and sugar-addled childhood memories means that a lot of reboots have a tough audience to contend with. The key to a good reboot, therefore, is to keep all the stuff that the old fans like, whilst improving on the flaws of the original. And of course, good stories deserve to be retold. 

The problem is, that Knight Rider is not a good story. It’s a crap idea with a very silly premise that worked due to a combination of eighties consumerism, machismo and the eerie attractiveness of David Hasselhoff. Could you possibly relaunch the show without the cheddar-like charm of The Hoff?

The 2008 Knight Rider movie almost gets it right. Let’s be honest, the appeal of the show is about one exceptionally cheesy hero taking on the world with the aid of incredibly advanced (and sentient) car, who happens to be extremely sarcastic. The movie was intended to be a back-door pilot for a series, and the movie itself is quite fun. Sinister bad guys are on the lookout for the esoteric AI technology that brought the original KITT to life. The show invents a new genius to be responsible for KITT’s existence, which happens to be on the run. A new version of KITT (Knight Rider Three Thousand, replacing the previous Knight Rider Two Thousand) comes to the rescue. The robot car (now equipped with internet access and the world’s best wi-fi) picks up the genius’s daughter, who also happens to be the ex-girlfriend of one Mike Traceur, an ex-army all action hero who knows a lot about cars and has a mysterious past. Together, the two rescue the errant genius, fight bad guys and form a new crime-fighting organisation, centred on Mike and KITT. (We get a brief cameo from the Hoff, but not one long enough to make a difference.) 

It’s flawed, of course. The plot makes little sense if you look at it too closely and the new super car is an incredibly ugly looking Ford Mustang Shelby GT500KR. Its new super powers are nice (it can shape shift and auto-repair) and the voice of KITT is Val Kilmer, who is the strongest actor on the show.

Alas, they then produced a whole TV series off the back of this pilot. It took a year for them to get their act together, and several of the cast from the pilot had already found better prospects. The budget is clearly much lower, and the show itself looks more like an incredibly cheap version of Hawaii 5-0 or NCIS. The stories are pretty much all the same, and Val Kilmer’s charm isn’t strong enough to carry the show.

The boxed set comes with plenty of DVD extra style pieces, and you get the feeling the actors and producers know they are in a turkey. One for completest fans only. 

KNIGHT RIDER: SEASON 1 (2008) / CERT: 15 / DIRECTORS: JAY CHANDRASEKHAR, ALLAN KROEKER, BRYAN SPICER / SCREENPLAY: DAVE ANDRON, GLEN A. LARSON, MATT PYKEN, GARY SCOTT THOMPSON, ROB WRIGHT, PHILIP LEVENS, PATRICK MASSETT, JOHN ZINMAN / STARRING: VAL KILMER, JUSTIN BRUENING, DEANNA RUSSO, SYDNEY TAMIIA POITIER, BRUCE DAVISON, PAUL CAMPBELL, YANCEY ARIAS, SMITH CHO / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

This is a multi-layered 10-part series that directly or indirectly involves the activities of the Danish Energreen energy company. Its poker-faced managing director Alexander ‘Sander’ Sodergren (Nikolaj Lie Kaas) presents it as a forward thinking company that is concerned about the ecology of our planet. As the series progresses we learn that he is a skilled manipulator of his staff, politicians and the media.

Sander turns a blind eye to the dodgy practices of his traders (except when they are likely to be exposed), plays the stock market at the cost of his rivals and in the science-fiction-like setting of Abu Dhabi he uses all his skills to get investment in a fantastic superconductor project. Behind closed doors he admits the project is more a dream than an imminent technological breakthrough, proving yet again that behind the mask of ‘saving the planet’ he is a ‘simple businessman’ who is there to make a profit at whatever cost. He’s not that bothered about giving power to the people it is just a means to an end.

In the Energreen legal department, ambitious Claudia Moreno (Natalie Madueno) gets promotion by discovering dirty dealings in the company. Her work quickly impresses Sodergren, who has great plans for her future career. At home she is separated from her husband and they share looking after their child as best they can, though this soon runs into difficulties when he plans to move to Paris.

Elsewhere, we get police officer Mads Justesen (Thomas Bo Larsen) who is suspicious of a death at an Evergreen wind turbine construction site. He thinks the company is cutting corners to hit production targets and promises the Ukranian workers that he will tackle their health and safety concerns. Ironically, his intervention makes things far worse for the workers and he makes it his mission to get justice for them. Like Claudia’s, his home life is complicated, he has to juggle with the demands of work and looking after his children and wife, who has multiple sclerosis and a secret that he unwittingly discovers.

Into this heady mix is the storyline surrounding young garage mechanic Nicky (Esben Smed Jensen), who wants to earn enough to buy an apartment in a good area for his partner and their baby. So he is easily led astray by Bimse (Lucas Hansen) a reckless fellow mechanic, who drags him back into his old life of stealing cars to order, this time for a ruthless and impatient Serbian gang (aren’t they always). This has inevitably far-reaching consequences when they steal a car containing an iPad with Evergreen secrets on it.

The spread of stories and characters, makes it hard going at first but after a couple of episodes it does pull you into the unfolding drama as it brings in new characters and lets loose twists and turns that you don’t expect. It is an intriguing, engaging and beautifully shot look at the underbelly of corporate wheeler dealing that will make you think twice about the source and production of electrical power, and the political powers that run our modern world.

FOLLOW THE MONEY / CERT: 15 / DIRECTORS: VARIOUS / SCREENPLAY: VARIOUS / STARRING: NIKOLAJ LIE KAAS, THOMAS BO LARSEN, NATALIE MADUENO, ESBEN SMED JENSEN, LUCAS HANSEN / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

Masters of Cinema is a line of Blu-rays and DVDs that aims to showcase the work of well-known directors from around the world. 1900 is one of the most recent movies to be brought back under this label. It tells the story of two men who were born on the same day in 1900 but grow up in very different circumstances. Olmo, played by Gerard Deperdieu, is the son of a plantation worker and grows up to be a socialist. Alfredo (Robert De Niro), on the other hand, is a rich landowner and grows up to be a fascist. Because of it’s 5-hour and 20-minute running time the movie is divided up into 2 parts. One on each disc.

1900 is at its strongest when it explores the central friendship between these two characters, with the political history of Italy serving as a backdrop. Deperdieu and De Niro have great chemistry. You can see how their friendship could be formed but you also see the strains on the friendship early on. When they slowly begin to find themselves opposite each other, it feels like the natural path their lives would take them down and not a contrivance of the story.

Unfortunately the film lacks the focus to really capitalise on this friendship or on Olmo and Alfredo themselves. The plot of the movie depends on how the two have developed as people but it often feels like we are only getting the outline of their stories. As a character, Alfredo suffers from this far more than Olmo. His wife criticises the man that he has become but we too rarely get to see this for ourselves. We don’t see enough of Alfredo become the man he is accused of being and so accusations against him lack weight. We don’t see how Alfredo actually runs the plantation when he inherits it. 

The lack of focus on the friendship between the two friends hurts the movie because it means their friendship fails to serve as a unifying theme for the movie in the way that it should. The movie spans 45 years of Italian history and it doesn’t feel as cohesive as it could. The many historical jumps that the movie makes do not sometimes come without warning, and occasionally the audience could be forgiven for missing them entirely.

In fairness to the film, this lack of attention to the leads is made up for in part by the attention it gives to its side characters. The most noteworthy of which is Attilla, the foreman of the plantation (played by Donald Sutherland). The audience is witness to his repeated acts of cruelty and as a result it really matters when we see where the choices he has made lead him. Had a similar amount of time been spent with Olmo and Alfredo, 1900 would have been a much stronger movie.

1900 is a strong tale of friendship let down by spending too much trying to juggle all of its component parts without truly managing to blend them into a single narrative. It has strong moments and a great cast but fails from an editing standpoint. Regardless of these flaws, it is still worth viewing.

Special Features: English and Italian uncompressed PCM soundtracks / English subtitles for the deaf and hard-of-hearing for the English audio and English subtitles for the Italian audio / The Story, The Cast and Creating an Epic, two video pieces from 2006 featuring Bertolucci and Storaro / Bertolucci secondo il cinema, an hour-long on-set documentary about the making of 1900 / A booklet featuring the words of Bernardo Bertolucci, archival imagery, and more 

1900 (1977) / CERT: 18 / DIRECTOR: BERNARDO BERTOLUCCI / SCREENPLAY: BERNARDO BERTOLUCCI, GUISEPPE BERTOLOUCCI, FRANCO ARCALLI / STARRING: GERARD DEPARDIEU, ROBERT DE NIRO, DOMINIQUE SANDA, FRANCESSCA BERTINI, LAURA BETTI / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

There are films that people normally take for granted, yet every once in a while, there’s one movie that comes along, challenges people’s perception about cinema, and is instantly regarded as a masterpiece in cinema history. Citizen Kane is one of those films, and ever since it’s release 75 years ago, it’s still being hailed – almost universally – as the single best motion picture that has ever been made and its champions have constantly compared it with other cinematic gems, almost as a means of saying “they don’t make films like they used to”. Truthfully, that comparative statement has been flogged to death, but that doesn’t detract from the huge impact this film made back then and how now in this modern age, the film’s subject matter is strangely relevant.

The film’s titular antihero was inspired by media-mogul William Randolph Hearst, who was that generation’s Donald Trump frankly, and ironically, Hearst detested the film so much, he tried everything in his power to prevent the movie from reaching release. Also, the fact that Kane was married and divorced twice and had everything only to lose it all is heavily reminiscent of Jordan Belfort in The Wolf of Wall Street, however unlike that film, this contains an emotional core that has you invested. It is a film about the loss of innocence and the longing for happiness, whilst also centrally being about life versus death, which is the strongest and most common theme in most famous literature, and that’s one of the central reasons why this film is still a cinematic classic.

Throughout the film, you’re constantly trying to grasp the film’s meaning, and it isn’t until the film’s final moments that the film really hits home with its powerful message; you start feeling uncertain, yet this is followed by a feeling of enlightenment and appreciation that makes the film such a meaningful and emotional experience. Another aspect that has made the film so revered is in its technicality, which even at the time, was viewed as revolutionary. The concept of having Kane’s life play out by jumping in and out of non-linear flashbacks might’ve made the film convoluted, but instead, it’s surprisingly well structured and very easy for casual audiences to keep track of.

However, the real key component that made everything work was one man and he is the man: Orson Welles. He basically went through a “David and Goliath”-style battle to get the film made: tackling with Hearst, trying to get the studio execs off his back and, through making the shooting schedules long and arduous, the production crew clashed with him constantly. Plus, the film received boos when it was nominated at the Oscars. Then again, the great visionaries were often unappreciated at first; take Vincent van Gogh for example! Like van Gogh, Welles put his heart and soul into each and every one of his films, and with Citizen Kane (his debut feature), he literally put his own sweat, blood and tears into making this his masterpiece. 

In that sense, Citizen Kane is a film that broke the mould for moviemaking; from the meticulously planned camera work to the towering performances (not least from Welles himself), there isn’t a single component that doesn’t make this a stunning achievement in all aspects of filmmaking.

CITIZEN KANE- 75TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION / CERT: 15 / DIRECTOR: ORSON WELLES / SCREENPLAY: ORSON WELLES, HERMAN J. MANKIEWICZ / STARRING: ORSON WELLES, JOSEPH COTTON, EVERETT SLOANE, DOROTHY COMINGORE / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

Jack Palance is the antiques dealer with an African god in his cellar, in this very contemporary 1974 horror from Amicus and Hammer director Freddie Francis.

Palance plays Neal Mottram, who regularly gathers a coven of witches in the basement of his shop in order to make reasonably innocuous sacrificial offerings to an idol of the deity Chuku. But when a disenfranchised former group member turns up late one night, a fatal accident precedes a discovery that solves all of Mottram’s financial problems. Mottram becomes obsessed by the connection between the death and the windfall, embarking upon a process of seducing women who won’t be missed in order to satisfy Chuku’s apparent need for blood.

It isn’t long, despite his faith in Chuku’s protection, before the police, in the form of Trevor Howard and Michael Jayston, start connecting Mottram’s name with the murders. And when Mottram undertakes to add his rich aunt to the sacrificial number in a convoluted scheme that Agatha Christie might have been proud of, he essentially seals his fate in this adaptation of the 1967 Henry Seymour novel Infernal Idol. It is, in spite of the certificate, a pretty tame affair by today’s standards, essentially devolving into a battle of wits between Palance’s taunting shopkeeper and Jayston’s uptight detective, although much pleasure can be derived from enjoying the 1970s fashions and haircuts (Jayston’s comb-across has to be seen to be disbelieved), while there are a host of small roles for some pretty legendary names; Diana Dors as a tawdry former lover and B&B owner, Edith Evans as Mottram’s aunt and Hugh Griffith as her solicitor among them. 

Palance gives a wonderfully dry performance as Mottram, a cynical smile never far from his lips, and it’s his relationships with the various other characters that form the meat of the film – including Martin Potter as Ronnie, Mottram’s fretting understudy in the shop and a grounding counterpoint to Palance’s lubricious antiques dealer. Julie Ege and Suzy Kendall are terrific as two of the women Mottram picks up. 

Sadly the picture quality is rather dodgy in spots, notably some of the cellar-based sequences – ironic given that Francis’ main achievements were his two Oscars for cinematography – although rather than spoiling the fun, this merely adds to the feature’s archive nature. Craze has a very post-Summer of Love feel, with globetrotting hippy chicks and typically early 1970s fish eye lens photography, and by marrying these elements with a very downmarket London milieu – a mix of cheap and chipper sex workers and bustling but lonely railway stations – Francis’ film nails itself resolutely to its period. It’s seedy and low rent and ostentatiously pulpy, but it’s also tremendously enjoyable in an entirely unpretentious manner.

Special Features: gallery / trailers / Crazy Days featurette

CRAZE (1974) / CERT: 18 / DIRECTOR: FREDDIE FRANCIS / SCREENPLAY: HERMAN COHEN, ABEN KANDEL / STARRING: JACK PALANCE, MARTIN POTTER, DIANA DORS, TREVOR HOWARD, MICHAEL JAYSTON, JULIE EGE, SUZY KENDALL, EDITH EVANS, HUGH GRIFFITH / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

Based loosely on the biblical story of King David, this short-lived NBC series debuted in 2009 to strong critical acclaim but poor ratings and managed only 13 episodes before it was hauled off air.

Ian McShane takes the lead as Silas Benjamin, the King Saul-esque modern day ruler of the fictional kingdom of Gilboa where the monarchy has absolute power. The kingdom is fraught with problems; not only is the country at war with neighbouring Gath, but Prince Jack (Stan) has been captured. Enter David. In the opening two-part pilot, young solider David (Chris Egan), single-handedly faces down the enemy’s tanks, secures the rescue of Prince Jack, and becomes a national symbol of peace; actions which Silas is quick to credit for. Welcomed home as a hero to a court filled with danger and treachery is anything but harmonious and for David, his war has only just begun.

Kings excels in strong performance and multi-layered storytelling; Silas has a second family whose existence is secret to all but David. Jack offers a front as a spoilt playboy to hide his secret homosexuality. Princess Michelle (Alison Miller) remains traumatised from a life of illness and rallies to provide better healthcare in a court that devalues women, headed by her own father.

McShane delivers a theatrically strong performance, whilst Egan holds his own admirably against his more experienced nemesis, but the real standout here is the Winter Solider himself. Sebastian Stan excels at the chance to show what he can really do without the burden of a bionic arm weighing him down, as the tortured Prince Jack, never more so than in the standout episode of the series ‘The Sabbath Queen’. His forbidden love for fellow solider Joseph doesn’t receive as much airtime as Michelle’s doomed romance with David, but following a night with his forbidden lover, Joseph questions Jack over whether their love was real. ‘You’re the only real thing I ever touched’, Stan spits, his words dripping with undisguised self-loathing.

In spite of the promising setup, the final three episodes find alliances betrayed at every corner to the point where you really have no idea who to root for or what the endgame is. It’s difficult to tell whether these twists were a result of imminent cancellation, or an attempt to defy it, but regardless the final episode does give a strong idea at how the series would eventually play out, even if it ends on a semi-cliffhanger. In order to provide a true sense of finality to the DVD release, some scenes were cut from the original televised version.

With only thirteen episodes it’s a tough call to recommend a series that never reached its full potential. However, whilst Kings may not rule the throne when it comes to flawless execution of a bold attempt at a game-changer, there is enough here to ensure it remains heir-apparent to the list of series cancelled before its time. Worth a shot for McShane and Stan alone.

KINGS / CERT: 15 / DIRECTORS: VARIOUS / SCREENPLAY: VARIOUS / STARRING: IAN MCSHANE, CHRISTOPHER EGAN, SUSANNA THOMPSON, ALLISON MILLER, SEBASTIAN STAN / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

With the recent controversy surrounding the casting of Scarlett Johansson, as the Japanese character Major Motoko Kusanagi, in the upcoming live action version of Ghost in the Shell, the awkwardly titled Ghost in the Shell: The New Movie comes at a potentially fortuitous time.

After the assassination of the Prime Minister, Major Kusanagi (Elizabeth Maxwell) and her team attempt to find out who was behind it.

Ghost in the Shell: The New Movie is set after the events of the Arise storyline, a four part series which itself is a reimagining of the original Ghost in the Shell. As such you are dumped straight in to an ongoing storyline, the complexities of which prove very difficult to a new viewer and events and characters can be a mystery, one not cleared up by the information dump of an opening. However, if you are already up to date on the storyline then The New Movie will serve as a satisfying and entertaining conclusion.

The animation, a blend of hand drawn animation and CGI, of course looks wonderful; it flows seamlessly and allows for kinetic and exciting action scenes, which the film is littered with. Ghost in the Shell: The New Movie delves a little further into the concept of humanity and the enhancement of cyborg and prosthetic limbs and bodies and the philosophical aspects that surround this. The film creates the idea that when choosing prosthetics you may choose a part that will become obsolete, which may lead to you being unable to replace or repair it. The characters are confronted with this potential, most effectively in a memorable and disturbing scene that blends the science fiction with body horror. Togusa (Alex Organ), the only member of the team without cyborg enhancements, has his own problem in attempting to come to terms with the possibility that his life is in much more danger than other members of their team every time they embark on one of their dangerous missions. The Tachikoma robots remain as entertaining as always; a child’s voice and naivety inside an armoured and weaponised robotic shell. It is these characters and ideas that are the most enjoyable parts of the film.

Ghost in the Shell: The New Movie will be most enjoyed by fans of the series and those who are up to date with its storyline. For anyone coming in cold, then this isn’t the place to start. It’s still fitfully entertaining but enjoyment will be lost, as you struggle to follow the storyline.

GHOST IN THE SHELL: THE NEW MOVIE / CERT: 15 / DIRECTOR: KAZUYA NOMURA / SCREENPLAY: TOW UBUKATA / STARRING: ELIZABETH MAXWELL, JOHN SWASEY, CHRISTOPHER SABAT, ALEX ORGAN / RELEASE DATE: 9TH MAY

Fire City is one dim and dingy movie and you’ll most likely be inclined to run out of the house (other habitations are available) and bask in the glory of natural sunlight should you chose to venture into its dank, gloomy and thoroughly unedifying world.

Fire City is FX guru Tom Woodruff Jnr’s debut feature in the director’s chair (you’ll have seen his work in movies such as Ender’s Game, Skyline and – ahem – Alien vs Predator: Requiem and his CV stretches as far back as The Terminator and Aliens) and, true to form, the prosthetics and make-up designs are exemplary – think Buffy/Angel-era spiky-head demons and weirdos. It’s a crowdfunded project too, and we’re never ones to give such worthwhile endeavours a kicking (or kick-startering) but sadly, Fire City, well-intentioned and clearly a labour of love, is a dull and rather pompous effort that never sparks into life and is, in truth, a clunky and lumbering experience.

Frustratingly, there’s an interesting set-up lurking in the murk. It appears that demons walk amongst us, frequently in human form, hiding their monstrous visages from earthly eyes. The demons thrive on the misery of humanity and there’s plenty of it to be found in Fire City. The film is set in a gloomy apartment block inhabited by any number of drug dealers and addicts, abusive parents and assorted nasty types. But demon Atum Vine (Jelinek), who polices the block dealing drugs and keeping un uneasy balance in the relationship between humans and demons find his loyalties divided when he’s warned by the Interpreter of Signs (Churchran) that demonkind is in danger as humans are no longer wallowing in their own misery (not sure what world she lives in, but there you go). Vine finds his own loyalties torn when a young girl named Sara (Alona) needs protecting from abuse and violence at home.

There’s potential for a decent demonic drama here but the script is shoddy and unfocused, wandering and meandering aimlessly and the budget clearly won’t stretch to some of its requirements; one scene apparently set in a nightclub is realised with lots of hanging drapes and plastic sheeting, presumably because access to a proper club was beyond the film’s meagre resources. The entire story takes place in and around the apartment block and after a while it becomes a stifling, stuffy environment, poorly-lit and suffocatingly narratively limiting. Some sequences are so dark it’s hard to work out exactly what’s going on, much less why, and brief flashes of gratuitous nudity and clumsily-executed violence seem to have been flung into the mix just to perk up interest when it starts to flag. But the whole enterprise, Woodruff Jnr’s creature designs notwithstanding, seems flabby and ill-conceived, a not-especially interesting story crippled by weak production values and enlivened by a couple of impassioned performances, especially from Jelinek in the fairly thankless role of the disillusioned demon Vine and young Alona as the wide-eyed Sara.

Fire City smoulders occasionally but never really threatens to set the screen alight. It’s a damp, dark squib.

FIRE CITY: END OF DAYS / CERT: 15 / DIRECTOR: TOM WOODRUFF JNR / SCREENPLAY: MICHAEL HAYES, BRIAN LUBOCKI / STARRING: TOBIAS JELINEK, DANIELLE CHURCHRAN, KEELY ALONA, KIMBERLEY LEEMANS / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

 

When his wife is tragically killed in a seemingly random robbery, grieving husband Stanley Hill takes matters into his own hands, after corrupt police officers fail to do anything about her death. It turns out that Stanley and his barber friend Dennis, have a very particular set of skills from their former lives as CIA black ops and soon begin killing their way through the city underworld towards the truth.

The unexpected success of Taken and the even more surprising reinvention of Liam Neeson as an action hero has sparked a trend of aging dramatic actors taking on similar roles. It’s been previously established that Travolta is perfectly capable of doing action, most memorably as the possibly insane Charlie Wax in Pierre Morel’s equally mental euroshlock thriller From Paris With Love, but Stanley is a far less interesting presence to spend 100 minutes watching.

Such is the unimaginative nature of I Am Wrath, you’ll have the entire plot mapped out after ten minutes, for all the minimal significance it actually has on proceedings. Director Chuck Russell may have some questionable entries on his CV, but regardless of objective quality at least everything he’s previously had a hand in has possessed some degree of fun. There is an overwhelming feel of merely going through the motions here, regarding both the film and those acting in it, with the greatest tragedy being Rebecca De Mornay – who really deserves a lot better – being reduced to a walk-on sacrificial role.

The handheld filming style is presumably meant to ascribe some gritty authenticity to an otherwise overly generic revenge plot, but merely makes an already boring story appear amateurishly shot, and is periodically amplified by music that appears to believe on-screen events are far more dramatic than they actually are. Likewise the unnecessary use of slow motion, which rather than heightening the impact of attempted emotional sucker punches, instead emphasises how insignificant the unfolding action actually is.

Attempts to infuse some meaning to the wafer-thin setup come in the form of some late-stage rambling about divine forgiveness and corruption and damnation, in a ham-fisted and frankly laughable attempt to portray Travolta as some sort of avenging angel (hence the film’s title), which serves only to further highlight just how meaningless it all is. 

Unlike, say, John Wick, which actually elevated itself through its taciturn minimalism, I Am Wrath is a monotonous slog from overfamiliar start to inevitable finish, during which no amount of lazy shootouts or poor fight choreography can inspire even a glimmer of excitement.

I AM WRATH / CERT: 18 / DIRECTOR: CHUCK RUSSELL / SCREENPLAY: PAUL SLOAN, YVAN GAUTHIER / STARRING: JOHN TRAVOLTA, CHRISTOPHER MELONI, AMANDA SCHULL, SAM TRAMMELL, PATRICK ST. ESPRIT, REBECCA DE MORNAY / RELEASE DATE: 16TH MAY

Dr. God are a comedy group who have for the past several years been performing fortnightly improv and creating short films and TV content in LA; Bloodsucking Bosses is their first feature length film, and it’s a blast. 

There isn’t much to say about the plot that you haven’t already deduced from the title. Tim (Joey Kern, with the charm, looks, accent and moustache of a young Matthew McConaughey) works a dead-end sales job, playing computer shoot-em-ups on the company’s time and knowing his position is made secure by his old friend, acting sales manager Evan (Fran Kanz), who has problems of his own. Evan has two days to put together a sales pitch for the Phallicyte account, and none of the other staff can be bothered to pitch in. He’s also in trouble with head of HR Amanda (Emma Fitzpatrick, as sharp as her haircut), who’s just brought up the L-word to a breathtakingly lacklustre response. Meanwhile Ted (Joel Murray) is hatching a plan to raise the company’s efficiency that involves the recruitment of a new sales manager who learned his trade in Romania…

Much of the rest of the cast is filled out by Dr. God themselves, each of whom has his own particular place in the pecking order and idiosyncrasies and preoccupations to match, creating a completely plausible environment in which it feels like everyone has known everyone else for years. The repartee and characterisation are as quick and spiky as they are comfortable, and the visual comedy as adept and effective as the dialogue (“You’re telling me we get so little sunlight in this fluorescent hole the puncture monkeys are just fine?”). Essentially taking the situation and targets of Mike Judge’s Office Space and adding some of the kind of humour you had in, say, An American Werewolf in London, Bloodsucking Bosses is thoroughly enjoyable. Even the minor players, the janitor and the security guard, are fully developed and earn themselves resolutions in the final third that are wholly consistent with their characters. 

And that final act isn’t a disappointment. Cheap “horror” films often fall apart at the end where the ambition outstrips the budget, but Bloodsucking Bosses is inventive to the last, although there is of course nothing here we haven’t essentially seen before. If there’s a problem of any kind it’s that Bloodsucking Bosses never goes for the throat, contenting itself with being all satire and no scares. But to see that as an issue would be to miss the point; this is a film for anyone who’s ever worked an unfulfilling job and had dreams of decapitating his co-workers, and in that context it’s a supremely well-executed, deliriously creative and highly entertaining success.

Special Features: bloopers / behind the scenes

BLOODSUCKING BOSSES (U.S.: BLOODSUCKING BASTARDS) / CERT: 15 / DIRECTOR: BRIAN JAMES O’CONNELL / SCREENPLAY: DR. GOD, RYAN MITTS / STARRING: FRAN KRANZ, PEDRO PASCAL, JOEY KERN, EMMA FITZPATRICK / RELEASE DATE: 16TH MAY