Cell 211 (DVD/Blu-Ray) - Dir. Daniel Monzón. Starring Luis Tosar, Alberto Ammann, Antonio Resines.
A good, not great, prison thriller/drama from Spain.
On his first day as a prison guard, Juan Oliver is touring his new workplace when a riot breaks out, leaving him stranded in the overtaken cellblock. His only chance of survival is to hide his brief employment as a guard and convince the inmates that he is one of them.
This is the kind of premise that would get boring quickly unless the protagonist made some very bad decisions-for instance, placing himself at the center of every major conflict rather than laying low and avoiding attention.
Fortunately for us, Oliver has extraordinarily poor survival instincts. He has a habit of shouting out passionate speeches in the middle of the crowd and challenging the prisoners' scary leader on most of his decisions: the kinds of behaviors that provide healthy drama and a moderate-to-high chance of getting shivved.
So maybe it's not the most logical or believable of stories, but Cell 211 is convincing enough in its first half to deliver on most of the tension and excitement promised by its winning premise. Gritty performances by the inmates give the prison the dangerous and unpredictable atmosphere it needs.
It's only later in the film, when the story's constant attempts at one-upping itself start to get preposterous, that all the disbelief we've suspended comes crashing down onto our heads like a bucket of jagged rocks. Oliver's actions go from ill advised to pants-on-head crazy. The bloodbath that is the final act doesn't seem to be part of any coherent thematic goal. In the end, the film clearly believes it has said something profound, but I'm not sure there's anyone who could articulate exactly what it was.
3.5 out of 5
The Perfect Host (DVD/Blu-Ray) - Dir. Nick Tomnay. Starring David Hyde Pierce, Clayne Crawford, Nathaniel Parker.
Niles Crane finally snaps in this poor attempt at a psychological drama.
On the run after a bank robbery, career criminal John (Clayne Crawford) charms his way into the home of Warwick (David Hyde Pierce) on the evening of a dinner party. But John's plans for a simple hostage taking go wrong when Warwick turns out to be far more demented than he is.
The Perfect Host is written and directed by one man (rookie filmmaker Nick Tomnay), which at least partly explains how a script this bad made it through production. The dialogue is superficial and covers the same points three or four times before finally letting them go. Every major plot piece relies on random chance. While there are some mildly interesting turnabouts in the first half hour, the majority of the movie is a slog through variations on the same purposeless sequence: Warwick does something sick and crazy, and John tells him, "You're sick and crazy!"
An update of a short film directed by Tomnay in 2001, The Perfect Host has all the telltale signs of a small idea inflated beyond its limits. Boring flashbacks to John's earlier life pad out the main body of the plot, and the story shifts awkwardly into a sleuth film once the dinner party concept has been run into the ground. There's enough material here for a mediocre one-act stage play, and not much more.
Rated R for invisible nudity.
2 out of 5
