Writer(s): Jeff Buhler, based on the story by Clive Barker
Starring: Bradley Cooper, Leslie Bibb, Vinnie Jones, and Brooke Shields
Well we’re just continuing down the
Kitamura rabbit hole, aren’t we? After being moderately
impressed—and in mostly different ways-- with the previous two
efforts I’ve seen out of him (Downrange and No One
Lives), I was somewhat looking forward to seeing his most
well-known effort. After all, my biggest consistent complaint from
the two movies I saw was related to the B-grade acting: I even
wondered aloud in a previous review how much better his movies would
be with a better cast.
You know, it’s funny how things work
out sometimes, because he was finally given an A-list actor (in
Bradley Cooper), and even some A-list material (it is based on a
short story by none other than Clive Barker), only to let us down
with a final product that’s relatively pedestrian, at least as far
as Kitamura is concerned. It occasionally bubbles to life in
fragments, hinting at something worthwhile that never fully develops,
and ultimately leaving us with a disappointing final product that
falls well short, especially given the considerable talent involved
both in front of, and behind, the camera.
Cooper plays Leon, a wannabe
photographer looking for his first big break. He’s referred to the
owner of an art gallery (Susan Hoff, played by Brooke Shields), who
sees promise, but is ultimately uninspired by the bland presentation
of his photos. She urges him to get to the “heart of the city”,
because that’s where she feels he will start to see success.
He does as suggested, wandering the
streets—and eventually the subway—of New York at night (that’s
a death wish) to find darker, more “raw” material. That’s when
he eventually crosses paths with Mahogany, a brutal murderer who
stalks a nightly train and offs its inhabitants with a meat hammer.
Leon eventually becomes so obsessed with stalking the murderer that
it creates more than a little tension between him and his girlfriend,
Maya, a supportive gal who is being dragged beyond her breaking
point.
The murders, while incredibly graphic,
are placed sparingly and sporadically throughout, and also suffer
from one of the worst fads of the 2000s: CGI blood. As much as I hate
the stuff (it’s ruined many a movie), I feel like it almost
works here, with such copious amounts of it that it looks like a
digital painting—although probably unintentional, it certainly fits
with the “artist” motif that surrounds Cooper’s character. But
notice I said “almost”, because it’s still computerized, and
it’s still completely hokey; I’d be interested to see just how
much of an improvement practical effects would be. (Although in one
ingeniously disturbing moment, a woman is decapitated in first person,
her head laying to rest within sight of the rest of her body, before
the camera pans out of her eye to reveal the disembodied head making
one final groan.)
Unfortunately, outside of the kills,
the rest of the story feels half-baked. There are no reasons offered
up for why Mahogany does what he does; only vague “hints” that
are never even lightly explored. On the “human” side of the equation, Leon’s
descent into madness feels sudden and forced, and wastes the talents
of both Cooper and Leslie Bibb as Maya, who would have been more than
capable of putting more humanity into their roles. There's no gradual
buildup in tension between the two: it's just her going from
encouraging to disgusted by his actions, with no growing sense of alarm in-between. And
while I’m a huge proponent of leaving as much to the imagination as
possible in film, there are moments when it’s absolutely necessary;
I would say centering a movie around a killer, and then even going
through the trouble of offering up some clues as to why he’s doing
what he’s doing, would be one of those cases. Instead, we’re just
left out in the cold, with nothing to really even go off; it doesn’t
feel so much a mystery as it does complete laziness.
In my opinion, this is Kitamura’s
least engaging movie, and one that really shows more of his
weaknesses as a director: he just doesn’t seem all that interested
in developing the scenes in between the moments he can cause hell to
break loose. And considering he doesn’t get as many chances to do
that here as he does in his other films means Midnight Meat Train
is every bit as bad as its title.
Okay, maybe not that bad, but pretty
darn close.
RATING: 4/10
TRAILER
BONUS CLIP (Aforementioned POV Decapitation)
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