As I work my way through the entire Sci-Fi
channel movie catalog, a task that will get much easier since
at this point early in 2014 the SyFy channel has shifted their
focus from crappy movies to crappy reality TV shows, I must
admit expectations for writer / director David Jackson's
semi-dystopian thriller 'Do or Die' were pretty low.
Created in 2003, 'Do or Die' doesn't seem to have much going
for it in the way of star power or special effects, but it
does have a reasonably high concept for a story and we were
going to watch it eventually, so might as well get it out of
the way. Well my friends, sometimes low expectations
works in our favor. We're not saying that 'Do or Die'
was a particularly good movie, falling into the slot of firmly
mediocre, but mediocre when applied to the Sci-Fi original
scale, actually makes 'Do or Die' a good movie.
In the near future a virus has hit the planet Earth, or at
least a city on the planet Earth since this is where we will
be spending all of our time, and this virus causes people to
age a year in a day. I'm not quite sure how this virus
came about, and they might've told us but I obviously wasn't
paying attention during that part. I read a synopsis
about a meteor hitting or something that caused the virus, but
I think I would've remembered that.
Anyway, in this messed up world we have The Infected who are
born with the virus and will serve as our oppressed citizens,
and we have The Cleans, who don't have the virus and are
largely the oppressors. There is no cure for this virus,
but there is a treatment as created by the completely evil Dr.
Ethan Grant (Nigel Bennett) who has crafted a drug called
Anzinol which needs to be injected by the Infected daily, at
significant cost, if they want to live. The injection
stations are actually pretty gross, being these community
things that have a bloody needle which jabs the hand of the
user. I can't imagine anything less sanitary than these
awful devices.
Today we are going to concern ourselves with
two Cleans in the super bubbly Ruth Hennessey (Polly Shannon)
and her husband and Anzionol production manager Jack (Anthony
Lemke). Oh snap! Jack isn't a Clean, he's an
Infected whose been using a special device which makes people
look like they are clean. Worst still, Jack has
impregnated his wife, though he didn't think he could do this,
which means this baby will be born infected. By night,
Jack was a terrorist securing Anzinol for his people on the
outskirts in the Bluelands along with his hardcore sidekick
Iona (the late Guylaine St. Onge), but today, Jack won't be
helping anybody right now.
Now Ruth is in a heap of trouble. She's being pursued by
a hardcore but conflicted detective in Alan Yanin (Shawn
Doyle), Her husband who lied to her is gone, she has a baby
that authorities want to forcibly abort and her only help
comes from the woman Iona who loved her husband before she met
him. Thing is, Ruth believes in her heart there is a
cure for her baby, her dying husband told her as much, and
that Dr. Grant is hiding, because everybody knows there is no
profit in cure. And now Ruth, along with the help of the
doubting detective, must try to get to the bottom of this mess
before it all goes to hell. Or Dr. Grant rapes
her. Dr. Grant is really looking forward to raping
her. We did mention he was evil, right?
As we get older and as we get to the eventual end of the Film
Critics United website, I've decided to stop wasting my time,
meaning if a movie doesn't interest me within ten to fifteen
minutes, in a good or bad way, I'll stop it and do something
else. This is something I used to never do in the
past. Much to my surprise, despite my initial concerns
about 'Do or Die', I didn't turn it off. Admittedly,
'didn't turn it off' might not be much of a compliment, but I
have turned off quite a few in recent weeks but this older
Sci-Fi original kept my interest.
I think most of this interest we can attribute to Directorial
Competence. It is clear early on that we are working
with a smallish budget over here, considering the majority of
the special effects consisted of people with blue eye shadow
on their hands, but Director Jackson has a story to tell and
he tells at with as little fuss as possible, relentlessly
moving this movie forward. The story was setup in a way
that got me interested in the characters and their plight,
these same characters were developed well enough that kept me
interested in their well being, the world design looked
exactly like the one we live in now, but was sold to me in a
way that it least felt like it was little different, and then
I was engaged enough to stick around for the reveal of the
mystery of the cure, assuming there was a cure. The
resolution felt rushed, as if the filmmakers either ran out of
money or time or ideas or all of the above, and couldn't
properly close the story out, but all in all it wasn't that
bad.
The performances were functional, Shawn Doyle either being
bored or super cool, but then I remember that show he was in,
'Endgame', and he was pretty much the same in that only with a
Russian accent so I guess it's just my man's style.
Polly Shannon was bubbly and cute and never seemed out of her
element, and Guylane St. Onge was impressive as the hardcore
rock of the resistance. She will be missed. And we
have to get a shout out to actor Lyrig Banh who played the
prototypical angry Black captain and played it well. I
mean this dude was pissed off all the time. This is
listed as his only role, and that makes me sad. Somebody
give this a guy a job. If he is alive as well, that
is. And I don't know if that giant statue of Nigel
Bennett was real or CGI, but if it was real, I hope he got to
keep it after shooting was through.
All I'm saying is that 'Do or Die', whatever that title means,
exceeded expectations. Sure they might've been low, but
they were exceeded nonetheless.
