Echoes Of Violence
Starring Michaella Russell, Heston Horwin,Chase Cargil
Directed by Nicholas Woods
Rating: **
Maybe I was just bored. But I saw humorous irony in the name of the actor who plays the villain chasing the heroine across the Sedona desert.
His name is Chase, real name. In the film I couldn’t care less what he was called. I suspect even the writers of this supposedly sinister yarn couldn’t care a damn what the guy chasing the heroine is called.
For all we know the actor went through the entire film being called by his real name Chase. Because that’s what he does right till the end.For all the screechy tyres and paranoid wheels,nowhere did I feel any real danger lurking around the heroine.
A classic Damsel in Distress dressed up as a woman of contemporary American, Marayka(Michaela Russell) is the cinematic equivalent of a trainwreck. She can only mean trouble for our hero. A sedate real-estate agent named Alex(Hestor Horwin) the hero invites MsTrouble right into his home .Marayka, an immigrant on the run , not only convinces Alex to help her get rid of her tormentor’s tail, she even convinces him to take off with her to a destination where her enemies can’t find her.
Of course freedom is a myth, specially when you have your dark past chasing you. It is astounding how cretinous some men get around distressed women who just have to wring their hands and bite their lips for us to be putty in their pretty palms.
I am not to sure if Marayka actually does any of those two things, wring her hands or bite her lips. But she does seem fairly determined to make her way around her hostile world using her womanly wile while it works.
While the film struck me as being woefully inert at its core and devoid of beating heart, I found the film’s breathtaking landscape to be well employed by director Nicholas Woods.Yup, he does make effective use of the panoramic landscape. But the film is tragically lifeless and anaemic. It’s as though no real blood flows through its veins.
By the time the languid saga limps to its finale I couldn’t care less what happens to Marayaka or Alex who made his mother move to a motel place so that she wouldn’t be attacked at home by the villains. For a film about a dangerous liaison I found the proceedings deeply dull. As if the writers wanted the characters and the to suffer the in same catatonic climate .
