DVD Review: 45

.45 (2006) R

***

WARNING: This review might contain SPOILERS!

LIZ: "You are a woman, You have POWER and you need to use it. Lips, Tits, Hips. All Woman"

I was pleasantly surprised by this film. I bought it sight unseen used from Ebay for only .50¢ (+ $3.00 postage). I didn't realize at the time of purchase that I was going to receive a previously RENTED copy (the Ebay listing said it was used but didn't mention it was a previous rental which is risky) from Wally World video (the disc hub has printing that was marked out with a sharpie/magic marker that had a phone number and "WALLY WORLD Video" on it) So at first I thought I might have a crappy copy with the extras deleted but fortunately the Disc plays fine and all the extras are still there not blocked or deleted.

As for the plot of the film judging from the cover I thought for sure it was going to be a La Femme Nikita/ Point of No Return spy-espionage action film, but it is not like that at all. It is an urban drama with mild violence, some gun play a bit of sex and tons of the F-Bomb.

Milla Jovovich plays Kat a young woman who lives in a bad neighborhood of New York with bad boy Big Al (Angus Macfadyen) who is the gun running/black market crime king of the neighborhood. Kat stays with Al because of their shared love of guns and the fantastic sex due in part to his massive manhood. At first things are OK even though Al is a tough alpha male and short tempered, but Kat soon realizes that she needs to get out of the abusive relationship. Part of the tension comes from her best friend Vic (Sarah Strange) a lesbian and the most sensible of the circle of friends that Kat has, but Al can't stand her. Vic also happens to be in love with Kat but knows she can't have her. Also in love with Kat is Reilly (Stephen Dorff) an associate/friend of Al who is starting to turn over a new leaf and trying to avoid the dark path that Al is on. Reilly is also attracted to Vic and tries his charms on her but fails a few times.

After a huge round of abuse from Al that gets him arrested and the attention of social service counselor Liz (Aisha Tyler) Kat starts to realize the only way she can make her dreams of getting out of the neighborhood is to get away from Al. At one point Vic tells Reilly that if he kills Al she'll sleep with him, he tells her that he couldn't  kill Al he couldn't "do" a friend. He does start to take it into serious consideration though. Kat eventually gets her revenge on Al by setting him up for the murder of one of his associates.

As I said I was pleasantly surprised by this film, however, the use of some straight to the camera "interview" type monologues I didn't like. They were useful in moving the plot along and by giving some exposition and needed background info on the main characters, but I didn't like them. The story could have been told without them but the director chose that style to tell the tale. The entire film has bookend monologues by Kat to show the audience that she made her dreams a reality. During the commentary the director/writer said for some scenes he only had one camera available, and would have preferred to have two to capture more of the action.

Starring: Milla Jovovich, Angus Macfadyen, Stephen Dorff, Sarah Strange, Aisha Tyler

Directed by: Gary Lennon

TH!NKFilm

DVD Release Date: 24 April 2007

Region 1

1 Disc - 97 Minutes

I give the film itself 3 stars *** and the DVD for it's quality 3.5 stars ***.5 I would have liked the DVD to have had English subtitles, the disc itself only has Spanish, fortunately my TVs closed caption subtitles worked for this disc.