Review: D-Tox/Eye See You

Sly Stallone is an FBI agent whose destructive turn towards the bottle after a serial killer does away with his wife (Dina Meyer) sees his buddy Charles S. Dutton recommend a stint in a detox centre. Run by a gruff Kris Kristofferson, this is no ordinary rehab clinic, however. All the patients are traumatised cops (Kristofferson is also a cop), and the clinic is in a remote, snowy area of Wyoming. Unfortunately, Stallone doesn’t have much time for treatment when it appears the elusive serial killer has re-appeared and bumping everyone off. At first, the deaths are treated as the suicides they’ve been arranged to look like, but it doesn’t take long for Stallone to catch on. There appears to be a killer amongst the cops, which makes sense given the killer (aside from murdering Meyer) was always known to be a cop-killer. Meanwhile, there’s an horrendous snow storm outside, too, making escape very difficult. So, who is the culprit? Crusty old Robert Prosky? Hostile hard-arse Robert Patrick? British-accented Christopher Fulford? Twitchy and facially-scarred Jeffrey Wright? Or perhaps Reverend Courtney B. Vance? What about the token females (Polly Walker and Angela Alvarado Rosa)? Tom Berenger and Stephen Lang play two employees at the centre, the former a lunkhead handyman. Sean Patrick Flanery appears briefly as another cop at the retreat.

 

Like pretty much everyone, when I first saw this 2002 serial killer thriller from director Jim Gillespie (“I Know What You Did Last Summer”, “Venom”) I was singularly unimpressed. It seemed like yet another nail in Sly Stallone’s pre-“Expendables” cinematic coffin, especially when armed with the knowledge that the film took 3 years to even get a release. Having seen it again recently, I must say that my opinion has changed…a bit. It’s a perfectly mediocre film, just like “I Know What You Did Last Summer”. The problem is, unlike that film, Gillespie actually has a good cast here on paper. So when one sees the mediocre results, it’s a lot more insulting and disappointing. That said, there are many worse killer-thrillers out there I could name (“Cruising”, “Tightrope”, “Twisted”, “Horsemen”, “The Cell”, etc.), so mediocre is at least better than nothing.

 

The problem is largely the script, which is almost entirely transparent in terms of its mystery, but also fails to give any character outside of Stallone’s the necessary depth to care about what happens to them. Most of the characters end up either red herrings with no other reason for being, or just plain underwritten and waiting to be killed off. These are mostly good actors, the always rock-solid Charles S. Dutton especially. However, the script gives them nothing and Gillespie doesn’t seem to care. Stephen Lang, Christopher Fulford, and Robert Patrick are the only ones who come close to rising above their stock roles here. Watching Robert Patrick, in particular is amusing because you’d swear his diet on set consisted entirely of granite and shards of broken glass. That’s one gruff, tough S.O.B. Meanwhile, Robert Prosky is too good an actor to even be in this flick. Kudos, though, for not giving Jeffrey Wright more screen time, because his twitchy performance is excruciatingly mannered. He seems under the impression that he’s got the Brad Pitt role in a sequel to “12 Monkeys” or something.

 

To the transparency point, we get to see enough of the killer’s face to know their skin colour, gender, and approximate age, so several of the cast members can be written off as mere dead meat right off the bat. From there on you can easily narrow it down to two people at most after about twenty minutes, particularly when you remove the obvious red herrings. When you do have the person pegged, you have to wait for everyone else to catch up. That’s the only thing keeping you going, waiting until the reveal to see if you guessed right or not. And believe me, that’s a lot of time in between before you get to find out (what you already know anyway). The film also suffers from an identity crisis, starting out very much like a “Se7en” rip-off (including the grungy opening credits), but eventually devolving into “Ten Little Indians” via “Friday the 13^th” with a setting out of John Carpenter’s remake of “The Thing”. That setting, by the way, is utterly ridiculous for its intended purpose (as a detoxification facility). It doesn’t seem all that functional, and certainly not plausible. I know there’s plenty of remote retreats out there, but why choose one in a harsh environment if a positive experience and outcome are desired?. It mostly just serves to be there to provide an inescapable situation and lots of dark, scary corners. Sadly, despite his pedigree Gillespie is not much of a horror director and must share the blame with writer Ron L. Brinkerhoff (“The Guardian”, an OK re-tread of “An Officer and a Gentleman”). The stalk and slash scenes are all formula and quite ineffectual, perhaps largely because of the lack of investment in the characters and therefore their predicament. It’s all pretty boring, clichéd and two-dimensional. I will say, though, that veteran Aussie cinematographer Dean Semler (“Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior”, “Razorback”, “Young Guns”, “Dances With Wolves”) tries his best to lend Gillespie a helping hand. The exteriors are especially lovely and Semler makes sure that the dark interiors aren’t too dark or murky. This is a bit of a dud film, but it’s a good-looking one. Stallone tries his damn best too. This ain’t “Cop Land”, but Stallone puts in a fine performance in what might’ve been his answer to Arnie’s alcoholic cop looking for apocalyptic redemption in the better “End of Days”.

It's not an awful film by any means, but look at that cast and tell me it shouldn’t have been significantly better.

 

Rating: C