Review: Dangerous

Scott Eastwood (sounding alarmingly like his dad at times) stars as a paroled, medically certified sociopath venturing back to his remote hometown to look into how his brother ended up dead. Being a sociopath and all, the locals aren’t very welcoming of his presence – especially his own mother (Brenda Bazinet) who is actively hostile towards him. He’s taking meds though, and his rather distracted psychiatrist (Mel Gibson) is on call whenever he needs it, thinking that this homecoming will be good for Eastwood. Enter Kevin Durand and his team or mercs looking for something that Eastwood’s dead brother had been hiding, something obviously valuable. Oh, and Durand is a psycho former acquaintance of Eastwood’s. That’s right, the bad guy is a psycho and the only thing standing in his way is a sociopath with no understanding of or capacity for empathy towards others. Brendan Fletcher plays an island local, Tyrese Gibson a local sheriff, and Famke Janssen is the FBI agent tracking Eastwood down for another attempted murderer since his parole (which was perhaps justified self-defence).

 

Director David Hackl (“Saw V”), screenwriter Chris Borrelli (“The Marine 2”, “Whisper”), and producer-star Scott Eastwood have absolutely no idea what they’re doing with this extremely misguided action-thriller from 2021. Nothing about this film convinces, including most of the casting and characters – 58 year-old Famke Janssen as an FBI agent/SWAT team leader? Mel Gibson as a psychiatrist? OK, that one might’ve been an intentional bit of gag casting, but it’s not a successful gag and Gibson flatlines in the role. Least convincing of all is lead actor Scott Eastwood playing a supposed certified sociopath. Oh boy, does no one here have a clue how to make this character remotely convincing. I’ve seen Eastwood do fine work as a villain before (“Wrath of Man” especially), but this more complicated character is beyond his talents. Partly because it’s so unconvincingly written that it leaves him very little chance. I understand the idea behind this character, but writer Borrelli doesn’t seem to care to treat his affliction seriously or believably. It’s actually rather offensive to use sociopathy as a ‘clever’ gimmick the way it is here. The idea is to make this guy somehow remorseful to some extent but also turning around and not understanding people’s feelings the next minute. It’s to keep you on edge as to whether he can truly be trusted and suppress his instincts, but to what merit? I know horror movies have been using psychos and the like as stalking menaces for decades, but this is much more objectionable in my view. The idea is also to turn him into a kind of Hannibal Lecter ‘likeable’ nutjob criminal who aids the good guys and take down the bad guys. This is dumb, because his medication’s purpose is not to make him more ‘normal’, it simply helps suppress his worst tendencies. It simply isn’t believable that he'd care to save the day here. He has no empathy, no capacity for it, with or without the drugs. He’s just meant to be less threatening to society on the drugs, that’s all. I’m not saying this to suggest that it’s not true to life (it’s a fictional film), I’m saying it’s not even true to the film’s own internal logic. It’s also deeply offensive that the Mel Gibson psychiatrist character flippantly and drunkenly provides rationale for Eastwood’s dangerous whack-job character to kill people worse than he is. It’s really disturbing, even if one suspects there’s a bit of piss-taking going on with the Gibson character. Also problematic is director Hackl’s style, which is aggravating. The whole thing has been edited within an inch of its life.

 

The film’s one positive comes from a perfectly cast Kevin Durand, looking alarmingly like Elon Musk and believably portraying a total sociopath, the flipside of the same coin to Eastwood’s character. A man who seemingly actively enjoys being a black hole of humanity, he may or may not be medically accurate but he's certainly a believable movie psycho. Much less impressive is a slumming Mel Gibson giving the barest of minimum performances in the saddest of paycheck-collecting casting. Spending much of his performance on speakerphone and drinking heavily, he totally half-arses it in arguably his worst film to date. Yes, even worse than the one with the tiger in an apartment.

 

This is a disaster, and yes potentially rather dangerous. Confusingly and unconvincingly told, badly written, directed, edited, and also mostly badly acted. Kevin Durand is pretty good, the film is pretty embarrassing and has a frankly foul message.

 

Rating: D-