CROSS DVD (2011)

SYNOPSIS: When beautiful, young women start disappearing from the streets of L.A., it’s time for good-guy Callan (a.k.a. Cross) and his crew of weapons experts to kick into high gear and take out the trash. Granted incredible power by his ancient Celtic cross, Callan must fight to stop an immortal Viking from destroying mankind.

MOVIE REVIEW:

If ever there was an experience we would never wish on our readers, this movie would be it. Sitting through all 90 mins of it was so painful we reckon even thrashing it thereafter wouldn’t be enough payback. Indeed, the utter lack of merit in director Patrick Durham’s ‘Cross’ is appalling to say the least, especially since it does boast at least a who’s who of DTV pedigree- including Brian Austin Green, C. Thomas Howell, Michael Clarke Duncan and even Rodriguez regular Danny Trejo.

Right from the start, this superhero flick wanna-be gets it all wrong. An inspired comic book introduction informs us of ancient relics that give their possessor great powers, with the Green Cross being the most powerful among them. Said relic happens to be in the hands of vigilante crime fighter Callan (Austin Green), who is impervious to injury thanks to the Cross- though the price for that apparently is the green glow around him he has to put up with. The amateurish special effects not withstanding, there is something decidedly inert about Durham’s storytelling- and it doesn’t help that he likes to introduce characters by simply inserting floating text captions.

The villain here is some criminal overlord Erlik (Clarke Duncan in what is possibly one of the worst performances we have ever seen from him), and his menacing associate Gunnar (Vinnie Jones looking sully as ever) whom he’s hired to help him take over the city. Both are equally hammy, and could very well turn this into a parody on the genre. Except that it is not- and by the time Callan comes into the picture and tries to make us care about the struggle between good and evil, we are seriously flabbergasted at how daft the filmmakers must have been.

To add salt to injury, Durham seems to love exposition so instead of action, we get characters talking a lot to each other. Even when it comes to spicing things up, Callan turns out to be as inert in bed as he is fighting criminals, leaving the lady (Susie Abromeit) to do all the work (of course, Austin Green may not be interested since he already has Megan Fox at home). We apologise for the digression, but we found ourselves having to divert our thoughts to more random and certainly more interesting matters as the movie unspooled.

‘Cross’ is a terrible movie, period. And that’s not because the filmmakers had to make their superhero movie on a shoestring DTV movie budget. Everything from the acting, to the scripting, to the directing, is abysmal- and that has absolutely nothing to do with what the filmmakers had to work with. Avoid this at all costs- you can cure your superhero movie fix by catching ‘Thor’, ‘Captain America’ or even the so-so ‘Green Lantern’ several times over before you get to this

SPECIAL FEATURES:

The film contains an Audio Commentary by director Patrick Durham, which is abhorrent to say the least, especially having to listen to him praise his movie after sitting through it. An Alternate Ending adds nothing to the film. And there are eight minutes worth of Deleted Scenes, which is where the entire film should have belonged.

AUDIO/VISUAL:

The Dolby Digital 5.1 audio is nothing to shout about, since there’s so little in the movie that uses any surround material. Visuals are clear, and emphasise the low-budget nature of the film.

MOVIE RATING:

DVD RATING :

Review by Gabriel Chong

Posted on 30 July 2011