The glamorous woman is alive and well in the Los Angeles indie movie No Way Out, an old-fashioned noir dressed in steamy decadence for a thriller thriller. The problem is that veteran producer Keith Kjarval’s first single screenplay doesn’t provide the kind of memorable characters or sharp plot needed to strike a dark crime melodrama. And director Uzi Rahman’s debut in a reasonably elegant way on the wild side isn’t enticing enough as a stylistic exercise, reaching the value of an “irreversible” shock without sounding too abrupt or overreaching.
There’s enough sex and violence here to grab attention for an hour and a half, but the interest or persuasion to explain why all of this happened — not to mention why viewers care — proves elusive. Vertical Entertainment opens the film to a few US theater screens on August 8, coinciding with the digital release and VOD, where it will find its core audience.
distance De Rigoire Opening a tease of the upcoming Bloody Mayhem, we meet Nick (Joey Bicicchi) taking pictures on the beach, and being drawn to his attention by Australian bottle blonde Tessa (Maya Mitchell). When he bumps into her a few times, she pretends to be annoyed by this “stalker” – but also seems to be late for a blind coffee date. Since they both appear to be competing for the Most Jaded & Flippant award, this date doesn’t bode well. So she is not expected to show up later on his doorstep carrying the party medicine, thus beginning a long day of urban fun that ends with a long night in bed.
He was surprised the next morning to find her browsing through his computer files. But she claims that she just liked his photography, and wants to help his career — which, in fact, is quickly transporting her into the realms of couture shoots and in-laws like obnoxious style expert Nemo (Jay Burnet). After several montages of music videos resembling Mutual Bliss music videos, she sees some strange-looking men at a private party and insists she should leave town. It turns out that the men who didn’t even mention had apparently drugged, sexually assaulted her and photographed her on another occasion when she was new to Los Angeles a few months ago. She did not follow up with the police after she was told that the perpetrators could not cross without causing more harm.
Nick asks her to stay, and their conversation escalates in record time to this request: “Do you love me? Then kill them!” His understandable rejection is even faster. Up until that point, it’s okay if not especially involving hipster romance, “No Way Out” requires a lot of commentary for disbelief in asking us to accept our hero’s sudden transformation into Lethal Avenger. Is he hasty or even blinded by love? While the leads (both of which are executive producers here) perform decent enough, the script provides them with a simple definition of personality beyond “so sexy to each other,” and frankly the chemistry isn’t overwhelming.
The disorienting thriller that followed had Bicicchi go from your stereotypical five-hour shady, chain-smoking, “moody downtown artist” Vincent Gallo look to a blood-soaked fury that makes animal grunts in between meltdowns. It might have been conceivable that a more surreal or otherwise abstract approach would have succeeded in this. But this movie doesn’t achieve any overall fever from dream to nightmare. Instead, the book remains somewhat of a literal mindset with an exceptional number of psychological and narrative gaps. The fade seems hollow because there’s no real payoff: Tessa turns out to be a different person than Nick (if not the viewer) expected, though there isn’t the slightest hint of her motives, background, or anything.
Rahman does not neglect to praise the narration exposed in neon lighting colors, or depict it with many moderate pieces by different artists, some musicians also used among the cast members. Kept in reserve at the beginning and end, Tim Tontigo’s original score is preserved, in contrast to the full-blown traditional suspense hysteria the movie can’t quite support. Everything is good-looking and lively enough, even if the trappings of excess money set for the ‘dangerous underworld’ ambiance seem unconvincing and familiar: our clients attend parties with back rooms for bizarre sexual play, and under duress begin taking pictures of Nick transforms into show-like shows. Helmut Newton’s Violent Deviation. Yeah, yeah, we’ve all seen “The Eyes of Laura Mars,” too.
The best performance was given by Katelyn Pippy as supporting director Nick Sammy – the only person here who isn’t a thin hulk, and who might know his way around Los Angeles’ velvet rope and underground fields alike. Sami, who wears many hats, wears many hats, is easy to recognize as someone who lives in the real industrial city world in these locations. Unfortunately, the other characters in No Way Out are only recognizable as paler versions of equivalent numbers in earlier films that are better than the newer ones.
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