Soul Assassin (2001)
Review by HTQ4
Film:
DVD:

Features:

• The Making of "Soul Assassin"
  
• Running audio commentary by director Malkin
  
• Cast Interviews
  

Kevin Burke (Ulrich) is a high-level security official for a multinational investment bank. In fact, he has just been given the promotion to vice-president of security. To celebrate his promotion, he plans to ask his girlfriend to marry him--but her murder (in front of his eyes) on the night of the proposal puts a little kink in his plans. He then goes after the people who killed her, and learns a dirty little secret about his own company along the way.

Okay, just leave this one alone. When you see it sitting on the shelves of the rental store, just chuckle to yourself quietly at the fact that somebody put up money to have this picture made. Be ready with a cover story for when people start looking at you funny for chuckling to yourself. Anyway, the only thing this movie has going for it is that they know how to get the plot going. This would be a great thing if the plot were worth getting started in the first place. At its best it's predictable and at its worst it's just downright stupid. At one major "plot twist" in the story, I asked myself outloud how this guy could be the head of security and not know that his own company is laundering money and involved in all these scandals.

Not only that, but for a head of security, he is an incredibly bad shot. Most of the scenes that involve him shooting a gun have him missing his intended target by a mile and a half. Now, as a critic and moviegoer, I know that this is an attempt to create more suspense in the storyline, but they do so at the expense of the main character and, oh, reality. Also, they take too much time to tell us exactly who the hell it is that Kristy Swanson is in the movie. We see her tailing Ulrich around and informing someone as to his whereabouts, but we don't know the reason or for whom she's working. It just bothered me. After a while, I didn't care whether she was a good guy or a bad guy or not--I just wanted her to go away or become relevant. Probably in that order.

The DVD is just plain funny. The "Making of Soul Assassin" is really amusing: there are little snippets of interviews that are edited together with some of the fast-paced scenes from the movie (that have no relevance to the topics of the interview). Watching this featurette, it's really interesting to note that neither the director nor the cast have anything to say about the actual movie. The interviews section of the DVD gives you the same impression as the "making of". It is full of cast and crew interviews from the Dutch premiere of the film (what does that tell you?), and, of course, edited together with action-packed snippets from the movie.

The Director's Commentary track sounds like he's reading from a prepared script and it goes on for quite a while...too long in fact...before the real meat of the track (if you can call it that) gets going. Every now and then he refers back to his pre-written comments. Granted, this was his first feature film, and I'm sure he was nervous about his first commentary track, but he should have just trusted himself to know what he was talking about. The rest of the DVD is your common stuff; cast bios, trailers, etc.

Honestly, there is nothing that I can think of that is redeeming about this film or this DVD that puts it even on the rental list. Just skip it.