Review by Stephanie Scaife
I was surprised when the screener for Catch .44 showed up in the mail, a flashy looking thriller sporting a relatively decent cast (Bruce Willis, Forest Whitaker, Brad Dourif) and I hadn’t heard of it. A little digging showed that Catch .44 was filmed in the summer of 2010 and had a limited US release in December 2011, followed by a straight-to-DVD release just about everywhere else. It’s described in the press release as a violent crime thriller with a bad-ass attitude and a killer twist. I’m actually still not sure what the twist is and I’ve just had to sit through it. Not a good sign.
Written and directed by Aaron Harvey, Catch .44 desperately wants to be cool and clever and ultimately it is neither of these things. It’s an odd little film that on the surface could be a reasonable way to spend 90 minutes of your time. Bruce Willis stars as Mel, a greasy drug baron who sends three of his girls to intercept a drug deal: here we have Tes (Malin Akerman), Kara (Nikki Reed) and Dawn (Deborah Ann Woll). Throw in Forest Whitaker as Ronny the psychotic hit-man, Brad Dourif as the local sheriff and Shea Whigham as Billy, another local hired hand of Mel’s, then you add a bunch of double-crossing and what you should have is a by the numbers heist movie. What we get instead is a substandard Tarantino rip-off that is almost entirely incoherent and pretty much just plain bad. I’m not the biggest fan of Tarantino to begin with, so when faced with a piss poor emulation of his work I could do little more than deep sigh and roll my eyes throughout the duration of the film.
The plot (I’m using this term in the loosest possible sense) is told in a non-linear narrative and the opening scene shows us a pivotal moment before revealing the events that led to it. The main body of the story centres around Tes, who we learn works as a waitress in a strip club owned by Mel. Upon learning of her unique pick pocketing skills he has upped her (and seemingly two of her friends) through the ranks to where they are expected to pull off a drug heist. They are given a time to be at a truck stop diner in the middle of nowhere, but when Mel doesn’t arrive on time the girls take things into their own hands and royally fuck things up.
Where Forest Whitaker fits into this is still somewhat of a mystery to me. Initially he’s a nerdy guy with a stutter, then he kills a cop steals his uniform and starts talking with a southern drawl, before later adopting a bizarre sort of Scarface Cuban accent and finally what seems like his regular talking voice towards the end. Now, why he does this was never entirely clear to me this could be because a) I’d lost the will to live and was no longer paying attention or b) the story was so incoherent that there was no obvious explanation other than he’s supposed to be wacky and insane. Either option is entirely feasible.
This really was a bizarre viewing experience for me. There were so many elements that just didn’t sit right, from the stilted dialogue full swearing that sounded awkward coming out of the characters mouths to Deborah Ann Woll’s lesson in how not to smoke. Seriously, has this girl never seen anyone smoke a cigarette before? She clung onto it like a 13 year old behind the bike shed at school trying to impress their friends. Not to mention that there is little or no explanation as to why anyone was anywhere or why they were doing what they were doing, which wasn’t aided in the slightest by the non-linear narrative that repeated certain scenes (shot for shot) up to three times throughout the film.
Catch .44 is a puzzling and entirely unrewarding film. One can only assume that either the end result nowhere resembles the original script or that Aaron Harvey has some serious connections in Hollywood, all of whom must have owed him a massive favour, because I cannot explain how this film ever came to see the light of day. It’s dull, derivative and really one to avoid at all costs.
Catch .44 is out now on Region 2 DVD and Blu-Ray from Anchor Bay.