Well, you can't accuse this of false advertising, can you? But you can accuse Rutger Hauer, one of the most commanding screen actors of his generation, of doing absolutely anything it'll take to get up our noses. After a spate of outstanding performances in middling Dutch films and then crashlanding in Hollywood with probably one of the most complex villain portrayals ever seen in
Blade Runner, the world was his oyster. What he did with it was a succession of bit parts in blockbusters and leads in mostly featureless action B-movies, and this Canadian grindhouse-cash-in has to be a wilful finger to anyone still trying to make an A-lister out of him. It's not that surprising, given that he turned up for the
Blade Runner casting for the uberman destroyer role in a pink sweatshirt just to jerk Ridley Scott's chain, all of 30 years ago.
Of course he gives the part of a hobo turned vigilante his all, as always, and you'll watch it just for him, which is just as well because the film itself is completely meritless. The fetishised gore is neither inventive nor well executed, the dystopian setting and bad guys painfully flimsy and even the action violence is devoid of any internal logic, never mind the slapped-on human interest bit. Even the cinematography is inadequate, hiding behind lack of budget and a retro 'In Technicolor' in the opening credits as successfully as Wile. E. Coyote behind a skinny birch.
You just hope against hope that when he hits his seventies someone will offer Hauer the equivalent of Jean-Louis Trintignant's effective swansong in
Three Colours: Red and that he'll actually take it.
3/10
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