VANQUISH | FILM REVIEW
Dir: George Gallo (15, 95 mins)
An action vehicle for ex-Batgirl Ruby Rose, this plodding thriller set over one night stumbles slowly through the motions. Morgan Freeman plays a decorated hero cop, Damon Hickey – the police commissioner now confined to a wheelchair following a shooting, whose past may be not all that it seems. Yup, he was dirt, or bent in Line Of Duty parlance.
All this is painstakingly shown in an overlong, black-and-white credits sequence using newspaper headlines, one smugly extolling the virtues of director George Gallo himself. Rose has a daughter with a mystery illness that needs money to explore and Freeman offers to help… by apparently kidnapping her daughter and making her do five money pickups from five different locations on her snazzy motorbike. Rose has body cams strapped to her so Freeman can watch from afar in his sterile HQ. Meanwhile, Patrick Muldoon’s dodgy cop tries to fend off a suspicious FBI agent.
Clumsily shot and edited with multiple crossfades and narrative repetitions, Rose takes out various people as she does Freeman’s bidding, making more enemies as she goes. She encounters Germans who killed her brother, dodgy priests, flamboyantly camp men with moustaches and corrupt politicians and cops. What could be zippy and fun is weighty and turgid: attempts at banter fall flat as clumsily shared exposition about Rose and her dead brother’s past is eked out amidst headshots. Chase scenes are choppily edited and lacking in tension, doublecrosses have little impact and would be operatic moments are forced.
It’s hard to believe that writer/director Gallo also wrote the superb Midnight Run. Although Rose has charisma and Freeman is a seasoned pro who can’t help bringing a measure of gravitas, even when he’s saying “go left”, it’s very apparent that Vanquish is a waste of their talents.
Released via digital platforms on Fri 28 May
words KEIRON SELF