Starring: Dominic Purcell, Erin Karpluk, Edward Furlong
Director: Uwe Boll
Jim Baxford is a security guard working long hours to meet the bills whilst his wife recovers from a serious illness. When the economy collapses he loses everything. With nothing left to lose he decides to strike back at the Bankers and Corporate fatcats who gambled, lost and left others to pick up the pieces.
Dominic Purcell (the brother from Prison Break who didn't really, really annoy me) is not an actor who I expected to see carrying a feature film. I always quite liked him in Prison Break but he never really convinced in much beyond action scenes. This films definitely bills itself as being an action film but it's about an hour in before Purcell picks up a gun in anger. The first hour is spent utterly destroying everything in the life of Jim, who seems up until the point in which he snaps, to be a thoroughly decent guy. It is difficult after that first hour not to feel very sorry for him and the utter bleakness of the situation that he has found himself in through some some fault of his own. Because there is some fault here for him - he chooses to invest his savings and, as one of CORPORATE WANKERS points out at the start, he and people like him would not have been complaining had they turned a tidy profit.
Anyway, as I said the first hour is very heavy but is effective and props to all involved for that. The last half an hour is where we finally start to see some action though as Jim, armed with a number of very big guns and hand grenades, starts to take out those responsible for losing his money and the money of millions of other innocent Americans. The film does seem rather confused as to whether we should be seeing Jim as being the hero of the piece or not. There's more than simple moral ambiguity going on here - the closing voice-over by Purcell claiming Jim to be fighting on behalf of the people of America is played with a straight bat but Jim is no modern Robin Hood - for the previous 15 minutes he has slaughtered everything that moves. Apparently, if you wear a tie then you deserve to be gunned down whilst standing at a window or blown to pieces with a grenade whilst cowering under a desk.
The influence of the brilliant Falling Down are clear to see with the under pressure family man snapping and things rapidly escalating. There's just enough goodwill built up for Jim in that first hour of the film to allow you to go with him on his murderous rampage through downtown Manhattan at the end but it is a close run thing.
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