REVIEW: Breakout (2013)
Breakout is another one of those DTV movies where you wonder why anyone at all even bothered, including yourself. But it wouldn’t be fair to say it has no redeeming value, because if nothing else it’s a 90 minute demo reel for Dominic Purcell. The man is a great actor and even in a dull piece of crap like this stays professional, he’s the only guy really acting. In this movie I guess he figured if nobody else, maybe some casting agents or the like might stumble upon this feature and watch it through ’till the end. Brendan Fraser though had different ideas. Not only is he refusing to even phone it in here, the guy looks downright pissed to be involved. I’m not sure anyone could blame him either.
Unhinged madman Dominic Purcell and his retard brother head on up to the Canadian countryside to rent a cabin. When they arrive, the owner refuses to rent, he doesn’t like the cut of Purcell’s jib, so Purcell kills him, naturally. While his brother, unimpressed with this by now tedious murder business, carries on reading his comic book (figures). Turns out some kids in the area witness the slaying, so Purcell must terminate them at the first opportunity. Watching the movie, it’s kind of hard not to consider this a rip off of The River Wild (1994), looks like it may have even been filmed in similar countryside. Also hard to miss however is the cinematographer’s inability to make good use of it, nice location, horrible lazy shots. I mean, I get that that DTV business is always short on resources, but they had a nice opportunity here to inject some atmosphere and use the land to an advantage. Not so.
In a DTV movie you can forgive a lot, but at some point the weight of excessive plotholes and convoluted nonsense needs to be called out. Take the kids that Purcell is hunting. Their parents aren’t with them, they’re being minded by some associate. One, the mother, is at home and being updated via phone on the impending murder of her kids, yet she seems curiously unaffected and makes little effort to do jack shit. Then there’s the father, Brendan Fraser, a convict behind bars who coincidentally and conveniently wins a prisoners working permit logging trees at precisely the exact forest and time where all of this is happening. There are ten million square kilometers in Canada. Yes. Lazy writing, there is no excuse for this.
Sometimes DTV’s find their target. Not today, not Breakout.
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