Blackout film review: Josh Duhamel-starrer banks on B-action cliches

Language: English with Hindi and English subtitle options Cast: Josh Duhamel, Nick Nolte, Abbie Cornish, Omar Chaparro, Barbara de Regil Director: Sam Macaroni Star rating: 2/5 Josh Duhamel wakes up in a hospital with amnesia and discovers cops and gangsters alike are after him for reasons he can’t clearly recall. If you spot The Bourne Identity in that premise, there is a lot of Die Hard thrown into the narrative, too. Blackout is essentially a B-action movie that stitches generic set-pieces, particularly drawing influence from two of the greatest action thrillers Hollywood ever made. Sam Macaroni’s directorial also reiterates Hollywood’s unending obsession with quickfix thrillers produced on a low budget. The small action film as means of quick returns has survived changing fads over the generations, with only the hero’s face on the poster changing with time. From Charles Bronson to Chuck Norris to Steven Seagal and beyond, action on a budget always finds ready takers. Blackout is only latest in the line, letting Duhamel show off his stuntwork just for kicks. If the idea was to cater to all-out action, the makers of Blackout are unapologetic in the way they go about it from scene one. As the banner credits make way, Duhamel goes straightaway into the business of kicking butt. His character, which won’t be identified for a long time, is frantically trying to escape from someone or some place, which won’t be clearly explained for even longer. In a way the start of the film nutshells all that defines Blackout, with its fitful editing, frantic cinematography, loud score and choreographed action propping up storytelling that does not involve much brainwork. As the minutes pass, it becomes clear the makers of the film are in no mood to serve novelty. The flipside hits you almost at the same time: The action is fast-paced enough to never let you feel bored despite the film’s lack of originality. In a film where stunts hold greater significance than story, writer Van B. Nguyen, in her debut big screen project, goes for the minimum plot while creating maximum room for hero, sidekicks and the villains to show off their fighting skills. Duhamel’s hospitalised amnesiac, it soon becomes clear, is called John Cain — the fact that the name bears likeness to Bruce Willis’ Die Hard character John McClane could be coincidental or intentional, take your pick. Cain finds a woman named Anna ( Abbie Cornish ) at his bedside when he wakes up and she claims to be his wife. A weirdly sinister man flaunting every B-movie cliche of the Mexican cartel boss drops in at Cain’s hospital room and identifies himself as Eddie (Omar Chaparro), an old friend. Of course, it doesn’t take Cain long to figure that out Eddie is a Mexican cartel boss, but what shocks our hero is Anna’s revelation that he too works for the cartel. Blackout follows the tested formula of action films that cater to the lowest common denominator when it comes to dialogues. There isn’t much of imagination, as in everything else. Rather, in keeping with B-movie tradition, the film is laced with lines that conveniently and liberally use the F-word every time the screenplay needs to create drama. So, when Anna tells Cain he works with Eddie in the cartel, his reaction, meant to be a high point baring a hint of ironic humour, is typical: “I have to wake up and be a f**king cartel member, are you bullshi**ing me?!” With a runtime of less than 90 minutes, Macaroni wastes no time in moving the plot ahead. No sooner has Cain woken up in hospital with memory loss, he realises that Eddie, Anna and a whole lot of others including his doctor are trying to extract information from him about a particular briefcase. No one has an idea about its content but Cain figures it must be something very important. The brief case of the briefcase is basically what the film is all about. “I need that case,” bad guy Eddie snarls and the assertion, barely nine minutes into the film, tells you how the rest of the story will unfold. The plot is meant to get an added boost of drama with the entry of Nick Nolte as DEA Agent Ethan McCoy. No surprises, he is trying to trace Cain and is after the case, too. The threadbare plot leads up to an obvious trigger for the action to begin. They all want the briefcase, and Cain isn’t in the mood to hand it to any of them. You know how this will end even before the drama actually begins. Nguyen’s writing is flat, but it brims with use of expletive and also manages to sneak in a nudie scene amidst the heavy-duty flow of action. For a thriller that seeks to hike suspense using its protagonist’s amnesiac state of mind, original twists in this story are far lower than you would expect. Most of the twists, like the stunts, would remind you of several other films in the genre. For instance, the moment McCoy enters the storyline, you know Cain is in for a very different, albeit predictable update on his identity. McCoy reverses the picture of the plot from what Anna and Eddie had Cain believing, and that is the first of many expected cliches that the screenplay unfolds. Most of the twists are written into the narrative to facilitate a non-stop flow of fight scenes. If Macaroni looks at Jason Bourne to draw inspiration for his amnesiac hero, his idea to trap the hero in a single location — in this case, the hospital building — and unfold his adventure over a single night is inspired by Die Hard. In a different way, John Cain ends up in the wrong place at the wrong time like John McClane. If Macaroni’s directorial execution appears hackneyed, it is because he is too lazy to look beyond generic tropes. There are only so many ways you can beat your adversary in a fist fight or snatch the gun from his hand. The film’s overflow of action cliches, although niftily filmed, ceases to excite after a while unless you are a hardcore lover of the genre who relishes whatever unfolds as long as the stunts keep coming. The thing about the B-action flick is it hasn’t changed over the years, and it won’t. Blackout, with its deliberately heightened tech-specs to maximise the impact of the instant thrills, isn’t the sort of film that bothers about the finer aspects of cinema. Duhamel fights with whatever he can manage — trays, dishes, boxes and, of course, guns, knives, fists and kicks. If the idea is to reinvent his career as the new Bruce Willis, the actor needs to work with more original scripts. All of the cast including Abbie Cornish robotically go through the motions while playing out generic stereotypes. Nick Nolte’s appearance is a pleasant surprise, though the 80-plus veteran appears a tad over-the-hill to pass off as a hotshot DEA Agent with a knack of cracking complicated cases. Overall, it’s an interesting assortment of actors in a film that fails to live up to their billing. This one’s strictly a one-time watch for action lovers. Rating: * * (two stars out of five)

Vinayak Chakravorty is a critic, columnist, and film journalist based in Delhi-NCR. Read all the  Latest News ,  Trending News ,  Cricket News ,  Bollywood News ,  India News  and  Entertainment News  here. Follow us on  Facebook,  Twitter and  Instagram.