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D-Tox
*
Cinema Releases - February 1, 2002
Rated on a 4-star scale. Certificate 18. 92
minutes. Directed by Jim Gillespie. Written by Ron L. Brinkerhoff; from the
novel "Jitter Joint" by Howard Swindle. Starring Sylvester Stallone, Charles
Dutton, Polly Walker, Angela Alvarado, Tom Berenger, Sean Patrick Flannery,
Kris Kristofferson.
"D-Tox" begins with one of those
dizzying credits sequences full of ominous newspaper clippings, spinning
memorabilia and a serial killer groaning biblical warnings on the soundtrack.
And then we get treated to a bunch of scenes in which people get murdered
by way of a powerdrill through the eyes as they look through the peepholes
of their front doors. Yuck.
This is another movie in which a serial killer
has nothing better to do than stage an elaborate game for a cop, and in which
the killer manages to fool everyone with great Machiavellian schemes up until
the finale, when he is of course foiled by something painfully obvious. The
funny thing is that the film does not take place on the streets, in the form
of an investigative thriller -- instead, there are a couple of murders, an
hour in which characters sit around in a clinic with nothing happening, and
then the obligatory violent conclusion. It's one pussy-ass world when even
killer-thrillers revolve around group therapy sessions.
Sylvester Stallone stars as an FBI agent whose
wife is murdered by the killer in question; he turns to the bottle, whimpers
a lot, tries to commit suicide in the pouring rain and is finally checked
into a detox centre in the middle of nowhere. Stallone's fellow addicts are
generally boring caricatures who sit around scowling and putting on the shakes,
although the character played by Robert Patrick is at least amusing, what
with his strutting around like a cowboy and shouting, "You call that an
addiction? You're all weak! Weak, dammit!" I also liked the careful, subtle
way the orderlies deal with suicide, which involves running down the hall
yelling, "Doc! Doc! We got a stiff here!"
The movie turns into a guessing game regarding
which of the detox centre residents will turn out to be the killer Stallone
was tracking, and before the guessing game even started I had narrowed its
answer down to two suspects. Stephen Lang, who played Party Crasher in "The
Hard Way", has 'Decoy Suspect' written all over him -- he sneers, giggles
maniacally and does funny things with his eyes. Of course the real killer
is one of the two people who have absolutely no evidence pointing to them
whatsoever. I figured the guilty party was going to be the caretaker played
by Tom Berenger, because otherwise his role wouldn't need to be played a
star -- but, uh, actually it's the other guy, whose identity I will not reveal,
out of courtesy for anybody who happens to be reading this review but has
never before seen a movie.
"D-Tox" ends with one of the funniest and most
overplayed death scenes in recent memory, but most of it is pretty flat.
What a long time ago it was that Stallone was a megastar and Oscar nominee
-- his "Get Carter" remake flopped in the States and never even saw the light
of day over here, while "D-Tox" has been sitting on the shelf for three years.
After a delay like that it's pretty amazing that the best title the distributor
could come up with sounds like the name of a second-rate gangsta-rapper.
Really amazing when you consider that the original title was "Eye See You",
and they still managed to think up something worse.
COPYRIGHT©
2002 Ian Waldron-Mantgani
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