Director: Uwe Boll
Starring: Dominic Purcell, Erin Karpluk, Edward Furlong, John Heard, Eric Roberts, Keith David, Michael Pare
Running Time: 99 mins
Certificate: 18
Corporate America has long been the root of evil in the world of movies. From ROLLERBALL (1975) to THE DARK KNIGHT RISES (2012), capitalism has been calculating and faceless, though these portraits are generally painted in broad strokes. When it comes to specific financial woes the US offers gentler fare like THE COMPANY MEN (2010), where Ben Affleck and co pondered the meaning of unemployment.
It surprised me that a film like ASSAULT ON WALL STREET, with its poster image of a chiselled avenger marching through the money district carrying a big gun, hadn’t been made before. Several years have elapsed since the misdeeds of traders came to light and the public’s frustration towards smug gits in suits has far from abated… surely viewers are owed a hard-boiled tale of revenge to act as a psychological dartboard. Ironically such a film has emerged from Canada.
Set during the crisis of 2007, the story opens with contemptuous company boss John Heard spewing venom. He wants to protect his firm and its shareholders from the impending faecal twister about to hit the financial sector, even if it’s at the expense of poor Joe Schmo. Two fresh-faced lackeys are powerless against his rant – these guys are just begging for a lead sandwich with a side order of whup-ass, right? Unfortunately as ASSAULT ON WALL STREET develops you realize they’re not going to get that anytime soon. What we end up with is a protracted social drama with the kernel of an action thriller forever itching to pop.
Writer/Director Uwe Boll certainly makes his case but he makes it over and over. The TV in vigilante-to-be Dominic Purcell’s house bombards us with factoids and opinions throughout the film and all this does is weigh the narrative down. Surely the point is they’re all going to get their butts kicked? Case closed, with extreme prejudice! English actor Purcell looks ready to bust some heads from the first second – he’s an alarming presence at first, resembling a Russian hitman who’s just had his electric cut off. You don’t buy him as a doting husband, but to the actor’s credit he puts some effort into his performance and his New York accent is very good. It isn’t long before you’re at least mildly sympathetic to his plight. And what a plight – as his broker misinvests his savings and his life falls to pieces misery piggybacks upon misery as he loses his job and his sick wife (Erin Karpluk) commits suicide. The wrist-cutting scene is hardly a classic but Boll and Karpluk manage to induce some wincing. The story packs its weightiest punch at this point, not so much for the overwrought scenario as for the idea we can become easily entangled and undone by the briefest flirtation with the stock market.
By the time Purcell has resolved to dispense some gun-shaped justice, glowering across the Hudson at the towers of power and stripping to the waist to reveal his macho tattoos, the film promises to get its hands dirty. Frustratingly as the rippling protagonist turns sniper the assassination sequences fall flat – for his first kill we really needed some tension-building but instead Boll gives us a murky slapdown in a car park, the target dispatched with all the flair of a card going in a letterbox.
Boll has achieved minor legendary status with cheap and relatively cheerful product such as HOUSE OF THE DEAD (2003) and IN THE NAME OF THE KING: A DUNGEON SIEGE TALE (2006). If anyone was going to do DEATH WISH in the Boiler Room it’s him but instead he has built a belated TV movie of the week around the bones of a Dolph Lundgren vehicle. By the time the violence properly erupts your 90 mins are almost over and the opportunity has been missed. A bit of satire would have tempered the relentless gloom – unfortunately there is scant levity in the mix. There’s a glimmer of a sense of humour as first Purcell then a SWAT team are forced to wait in a lift being piped to the hilt with muzak, but then seconds later it’s gone.
Purcell wandering into the offending firm’s office and taking out the trash in ties should have been shocking, or at least amusing. Boll ends up garnishing a lot of ‘point and shoot’, if you’ll pardon the expression, with shoddy slo-mo and extras coping with a few packs of exploding cranberry juice. The final confrontation between Purcell and Heard is all too brief and some cat and mouse would have taken the action up a notch.
Boll wisely casts some recognizable faces in supporting roles. Those who know Edward Furlong’s name from his younger days as John Connor in TERMINATOR 2 will get a surprise as he is now headed for middle age. In fact most of the men in this film look paunchy and shattered, unlike the women, who have all sashayed out of a catalogue. The script could perhaps have been realized more successfully with a regular guy presence like Furlong in the lead. Eric Roberts plays Purcell’s smarmy lawyer, a peculiar cameo appearance that’s a cross between a Presidential hopeful and The Nutty Professor.
With opening titles comprised of a driving synthesizer score over recession reportage you’re put in mind of John Carpenter. Indeed he directed his very own ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13 (1976). Comparisons can also be drawn with Carpenter’s THEY LIVE (1988), in which an off-duty wrestler discovered zombie-faced aliens were behind all advertising. Using special sunglasses to see through their human forms, the solution was simple – locate the nearest shotgun and start blasting. Oh for the want of magic glasses and a double-barrelled prescription here.
[usr=2] ASSAULT ON WALL STREET is released on DVD 19th May.
