Avarice Review
A nearly unwatchable Aussie actioner that limps to a conclusion you could see coming from the drive to the theatre.
Kate Matthews (Gillian Alexy) is a gifted archer, whose competition prowess is falling a little short. She’s also having marital issues, so her, her husband Ash (Luke Ford) and their daughter Sarah (Tea Heathcote-Marks) go away on a little trip to a house stay. Once they are there, however, they are the victims of a home invasion; only this home invasion is no random attack. The highly capable military mecernary group are after Kate’s computer whiz husband, who is forced - upon pain of his business partner’s death - to complete a multi-million transaction. Meanwhile, Kate and Sarah are stuck in the house with a psychopath. To escape the situation, and rescue her husband, Kate has to lean on her archery skills and hope they are a match for the guns and knives of this military outfit.
Directed by John V. Soto, Avarice has the sort of visual tonality that speaks to a great looking still image for a press kit, but a blue saturated mess on screen. One could be forgiven from the poster that the movie is going to be a thrill a minute shoot em up. Instead, it’s a slow, budget constrained piece of filmmaking that completely misses the tension, suspense and edge of the seat thrill that it is looking for.
Alexy is pretty solid in the lead role, delivering a frequently compelling performance that feels bigger than the film around it. She carries the piece, giving it a level of watchability that the rest of the filmmaking fails to match. Ryan Panizza as evil Kane is doing a lot, but his performance feels a little out of place for this film; he’s creepy, but the direction and script aren’t matching it. Nick Atkinson steals scenes in his few brief appearances.
The major burden the film faces stretches across the technical areas predominantly. Visually, the film’s intensely washed out colour palette makes everything dull and drab, and ultimately saps the fun out of the piece. The direction is plodding, and the pace of the film (even at 88 minutes) is super slow for what is happening on screen. The set decoration of the villain’s lair feels cheap. Most of all, the script is absolutely cliche ridden and written as if the writing team (this took 4 people somehow) had never heard a human person speak before.
That truly terrible dialogue hampers the cast tremendously, but particularly Luke Ford and Alexandra Nell. Their cookie cutter characters are completely overshadowed by the corny dialogue they have, with Nell’s violent villain, complete with cool face scar and vaguely touched on military mythos, bearing the worst of it.
Ultimately, Avarice looked like a bit of fun; but with a poor script, some shoddy acting, and a trudging pace that saps all tension, action and enjoyment out of the film, fun it is not.
