Man… 'Raze' was a wildly unpleasant
experience. Perfectly executed, crisply presented, and
I'm thinking that the vision that director and co-writer Josh
C. Waller envisioned for his film came out very close to the
way he saw it, but this was not a fun way, at least for me, to
pass 90 minutes of time.
The pretty girl, Jamie (Rachel Nichols), is on one of those
E-Harmony or Match.com dates. The date seems to have
gone great, and in fact if Jamie would've been just a little
more accommodating, the date might've ended with my man
getting breakfast in the morning, but Jamie's not that kind of
girl. Jamie takes a bath, but the next thing you know
she's tazed into unconsciousness and wakes up in some kind of
dank, dark lit cell wearing sweat pants and a really tight
tank top. If you like seeing super fit young women in
sweat pants and really tight tank tops… here you go.
Jamie wanders the halls of this facility and runs into Sabrina
(Zoe Bell) who is also in sweats and a tank. Jamie is
confused and disoriented. Sabrina seems a little more
lucid. The two women enter a room, the door slams behind
them and Sabrina commences to whooping Jamie's ass.
Jamie ain't no slouch in the fight game though, and turns the
tables on her. She doesn't know why this is happening,
but clearly if she doesn't fight back, she's gonna die.
At the end of the day, only one of these women will be allowed
to walk out of this arena. Zoe Bell is the main
character of this piece so we will let it go at that.
What's going on? Well, that's a
good question. Apparently a large number of very fit
young women, all of whom with some kind of fighting / athletic
prowess, were snatched off the street by Joseph the loon (Doug
Jones) and his batty wife Elizabeth (Sherilyn
Fenn). Subsequently, these women are made to fight
on closed circuit television for a bunch of strange rich
people who really
like to see hot chicks in tight tank tops
kill each other, tournament style. I think the winner
gets set free or something. Seems unlikely though.
You would think some of these women would just choose not to
fight, but should these ladies want to act up they will have
to deal with Kurtz (Bruce Thomas) the brutal hardass and his
Troops of Doom who won't think twice about bashing someone
with a butt of a rifle, or smashing a head against a brick
wall when needed. And if they still want to act up,
Joseph and his expansive organization have gone to great
lengths to make sure these women have little choice in the
matter.
At the center of this brutality is always Sabrina.
Sabrina had made alliances with some of the women, despite the
fact she might be called upon to beat them to death at any
given moment, and she's made a few enemies while in holding,
particularly psycho Phoebe (Rebecca Marshall) who really likes
this setup and wants nothing more than to meet Sabrina in the
circle. Oh Phoebe… you silly girl, don't ask for
that.
What happens next? The hero triumphs and the bad guys
get theirs? I don't know.
So 'Raze' ends and I'm sitting in silence pondering the point
of the film. Anyone whose read just a little bit of the
typo ridden nonsense I've written over the years knows I'm a
fan exploitation cinema, and one of the poster arts for 'Raze'
definitely gives it that 70's grindhouse feel, but I don't
think this is that kind of movie. If at some
point, for no reason in particular, all of our stars decided
to take a group shower… maybe. If at some point our
stars broke out of their confinements and started running
through the jungle for freedom… maybe. This was just
brutality for the sake of brutality, at least from where I was
sitting. This is one of the more violent films I've
recently seen. If you watch someone mow down people with
a machine gun, that's violent but not as violent as someone
stabbing a bunch of people with a knife or a machete, but even
that's not as violent as beating someone to death with your
bare hands. There was an awful lot of that kind of
brutal, in your face, relentless violence in this movie… but
to what end? I know it's probably silly and foolish of
me to look for some kind of justification or reasoning for
this kind of movie, but that's what I'm looking for. I
want to enjoy this movie because Zoe Bell is excellent in it,
the film looks and sounds great, Traci Thoms and Rosario
Dawson fight each other in tight tank tops in this movie, and
Rachel Nichols exists in this movie… but despite these
wonderful elements, I can't find any justification for this
movie to exist. It is dark, depressing and
nihilistic.
As it so happens there is a large section of people on the
planet who can appreciate this particular type of film, and
believe me when I tell you that 'Raze' is well produced,
well-acted, and expertly executed. I'm just not one of
these people, is all. Sexy hot chicks fighting each
other to the death… oddly enough I'm totally cool with that…
as long as there is some semblance of hope at the end of the
tunnel. This was hopeless violence. This I could
not get with.
