Lethal Force
In this town, two wrongs don't make you right - THEY
MAKE YOU EVEN!
In its first four
minutes, Lethal Force manages to parody 70s cop films, kung fu
flicks, The Matrix and Quentin Tarantino. It also introduces to Savitch
(Cash Flagg Jr), the hitman who is “mad, bad and dangerous to know” and
the main character of the film.
The tone of the film is set with a
scene in which all we see is Savitch’s feet approaching those of a
government agent and then leaping into the air. We then get to hear eight
seconds of kicking until Savitch’s feet land on the ground and the agent
topples over.
Writer/Director Alvin Ecarma had his tongue firmly
planted in his cheek when he made this film.
Once the opening
credits are done with, we jump forward nine months and into the plot.
Savitch’s friend and fellow hitman, Jack (Frank Prather) comes
home to find his wife and son have been kidnapped. Waiting for him in the
house are a blaxploitation stereotype and Psycho Bowtie (Eric Thornett),
the silent martial arts goon.
After much fighting (a phrase I
could find myself repeating way too often in this review if I’m not
careful), Frank is brought to the heavily guarded chateau of wheelchair
bound gangster, Mal Locke (Andrew Hewitt) – the man behind the kidnapping
of Frank’s wife and child.
Mal’s guards are worth a mention at
this point. Faceless goons have never been quite so faceless with the
addition of plain rubber masks.
Mal wants Frank to contact and
betray Savitch, delivering him to Mal’s clutches. And just to demonstrate
that he means business, he executes Frank’s wife. With his son’s life on
the line, Frank, not altogether surprisingly, complies.
Lethal
Force manages to both pay homage to and parody the whole genre of 70s
action films that far too many of us grew up watching, liberally throwing
in random stereotypes and clichés and gloriously sending them up in a
manner that the makers of the Scream series could only dream of.
In the same way that Scream assumed some familiarity with
the films it was trying to parody, Ecarma clearly expects us to be
familiar with the action genre and much of the humour is dependent on our
recognising the stereotypes and joining in the fun as he plays around with
them.
I’ve already mentioned 70s cop and chop socky flicks, but we
also get references to Wonder Woman, spaghetti westerns and heroic
bloodshed. There is even a John Woo style homoerotic flashback.
Plotwise, Lethal Force is far from original, but its energy,
pacing and sheer sense of fun more than overcome this, leaving you to sit
back and enjoy an unpretentiously funny ride.
It’s also worth
mentioning that, although the film is packed with forty years worth of pop
culture references, none of this gets in the way of the storytelling.
There is no stopping to make sure everyone got the joke, Ecarma simply
charges forward trusting his audience to keep up.
And if you
didn’t manage to keep up, rewind the tape and watch it again – the film
was every bit as funny the second time I watched it as the first.
Lethal Force is a stylish, violent and deliriously funny film that
sure-footedly manages to walk the very fine line between paying homage to
the action films of the 70s and sending them.
Watch it, then go
and buy the toys.
