Nori
is a lot like a young anime heroine forced to come into her own by sudden
adversity. She is also being stalked by a Japanese pop-star (the actor, not the
character). Yet, this film looks and feels more like low budget American indie
quickie, because that is what it is. There are a lot of intriguing elements,
but the energy level is lacking when Joe Sill’s Stray opens tomorrow in New York.
Fresh
off her own, personal, shorthand-character-establishing tragedy, Det. Murphy
draws the darnedest case. Kyoko was not merely murdered. She was “petrified,”
aged thousands of years in a CGI flash. She was Nori’s mother, so that means
the young woman will be left alone when her grandmother is subsequently killed,
under similarly bizarre circumstances. However, she finds an ally in Murphy,
who is still mourning her baby’s crib death, which motivates her to go above
and beyond protecting Nori, despite the stern warnings of her ex-husband boss.
It
is a bit surprising Sleight’s J.D.
Dillard is credited as a screenwriter on Stray,
because there is a lot of flab in this script. If you like scenes of people
standing around talking, then brother, Sill has a movie for you. Yet,
perversely, they never really establish the nature of the super-powers in
question. That might be understandable if Stray
were a two-part series premiere, which is really what it feels like, but
not so satisfying in a stand-alone feature. It is also left a little vague as
to why the relentless bad guy has it in for Nori’s family, beyond claims that
her mother and grandma were mean to him (honestly, that is about how they
position it).
Probably
most problematically, the mystery antagonist spends the better part of the film
concealed by a motorcycle helmet. That is not just a boring style choice. It is
absolutely baffling considering how much of the film’s publicity campaign is
designed to capitalize on the casting of J-pop star Miyavi as the ominous Jin.
All
of that is rather a shame, because Karen Fukuhara (Katana in Suicide Squad) is quite engaging and
poignant as Nori. She also develops some compelling chemistry with Christine
Woods, who as Murphy, develops some decent chemistry with Ross Partridge, her
supervisor-ex.
It
is easy to imagine what everyone must have hoped Stray could be. It just isn’t. The trio of Fukuhara, Woods, and
Partridge form a solid core group, but the rest of the elements never come
together, leaving all kinds of loose ends and rough patches. Likely to
disappoint most genre fans, Stray opens
tomorrow (3/1) in New York, at the Village East.
