Director: Simon West
Starring: Jason Statham, Sofia Vergara, Stanley Tucci, Milo Ventimiglia, Michael Angarano, Dominik Garcia-Lorido, Anne Heche, Hope Davis, Max Casella
Certificate: 15
Running Time: 92 minutes
Special Features: Original Sin – Las Vegas and the Characters of Wild Card / The Script / The Stunts
It’s been a while since we’ve seen William Goldman‘s name on a script. The now-legendary writer brought us Marathon Man and All The President’s Men, before going on to write industry bible Adventures In The Screen Trade and fantasy classic The Princess Bride. Now he’s back with Wild Card, an adaptation of his novel Heat. It’s an Elmore Leonard-style tapestry of world weary characters seeking vengeance or enlightenment in the neon jungle of Las Vegas. You could easily see an actor-director combo like Clint Eastwood and Don Siegel taking on the material – though of course the book was published in the Eighties, and Burt Reynolds starred in the previous movie version.
Unfortunately this is 2015, and action geezer Jason Statham and his Expendables 2 helmer Simon West are in charge. The pre-credits scene sums up what’s wrong with the film overall, as a leathered and leery Statham (playing security expert Nick Wild) attempts to chat up the extraordinarily-out-of-his-league Sofia Vergara. Between his Phil-Mitchellizing and her stilted delivery you’re witnessing a battle of the accents rather than concentrating on Goldman’s dialogue. The off-kilter nature of the encounter is explained later on, but it remains one of the most confusing openings I’ve seen in a long time.
We then follow Wild through his dealings with various vivid personalities. Like the plot, the central tough guy roams around, before friend and prostitute Holly (Dominik Garcia-Lorido) asks for his help getting revenge on gangster Danny DeMarco (Milo Ventimiglia), who has viciously assaulted her. At this point the tale starts to take shape, but we’ve reached the halfway mark already.
After an eye-watering sequence involving industrial equipment and equipment of a different kind, Holly has fled the city and Wild hits the tables to try and win the amount needed to escape the mob’s wrath. Here the inconsistent tone really starts to jar – West appears to be mashing together several different films under a banner of Scorsese-lite. When we’re not wincing at the sadistic content, we’re pondering heavy themes of luck and what it means to be a man, before finally getting an eyeful of Statham’s skills as a slo-mo Matrix-type warrior (which mainly involve him whacking heavies with various items of glassware). As Wild appears to be a one man killing machine capable of fending off ten guys at a time, there’s never a sense that he’s under threat, one of the movie’s big problems.
Rather than trying to be multi-stranded, Goldman and West could have done with simplifying a bit, if only to accommodate Statham’s limitations as an actor. He’s far more comfortable smashing heads and sadly these moments are few. The writer’s name has brought in a mind-boggling array of talent, from Hope Davis to Stanley Tucci. The latter works the best, as gentleman crime boss “Baby”, but these are all extended cameos and performers such as Jason Alexander and Anne Heche are wasted. A subplot featuring young millionnaire Cyrus (Michael Angarano) provides little except for a way of ending the narrative.
Execution is the main issue, but Goldman has to take credit for some pretentious dialogue and a muddled treatment. Wild Card‘s box office gamble hit the skids and on this evidence you can see why. There is the occasional laugh along the way and it isn’t an outright disaster. Yet it fudges what should have been a laid back cruise through Sleazyville, and totters to a limp climax like a bankrupt alcoholic on the way back to his hotel room.
Wild Card is available on DVD from 27th July.
