Wolves
hunt in packs. MMA stars battle mano a mano or in cages, whereas cranky old people
fight with everybody. All three will go at each other in David Hackl’s
wilderness-revenge genre-outing, Daughter
of the Wolf, which opens this Friday in Brooklyn.
Sometime
back in the day, Clair Hamilton’s father did wrong by the psychotic backwoods clan
patriarch known simply as “Father,” so his family of dubiously adopted rejects
has kidnapped her boring pre-teen son Charlie, demanding her secret cash
inheritance as ransom. Of course, Father has no intention of returning the
surly boy. However, a Special Forces veteran like Hamilton will not be a
pushover. With the reluctant help of one of Father’s “sons,” Hamilton will
track the vengeful old codger and her son, while hungry, baying wolves circle
both parties.
Admittedly,
Hackl is no Caroll Ballard (and this film is no Never Cry Wolf), but Into the Grizzly Maze was a seriously
entertaining B-movie, so it is rather disappointing Daughter does not have similar energy and attitude. Even with a
credible action lead like Gina Carano, the film mostly plods along lifelessly.
The tiresome semi-estranged mother-son relationship certainly does not help.
There are also plenty of questionable motivations and decision-making that
undermine audience’s willingness to suspend disbelief.
Carano
has chops and decent screen presence, but Daughter
is definitely a step backwards for her. As Father, Richard Dreyfuss (the
Oscar-winning star of Goodbye Girl and
Jaws) chews more scenery than
Pac-Man, but the tone of his performance is more strident than entertaining.
Beyond the two marquee antagonists, it is rather difficult to tell unshaven,
greasy-haired thugs apart from each other.
Frankly,
most viewers will root for the wolves. They are probably the most sympathetic
characters. Hackl and the animal-wrangling team stage some reasonably
impressive wolf-pack attacks, but that is about all the film has going for it.
Even
though Carano is the lead and on-screen most of the time, Daughter makes
poor use of her martial arts skills, which is really its biggest scene. As a
result, it is far likelier to frustrate her fans, rather than satisfying them.
Mostly disappointing, Daughter of the Wolf opens Friday (6/14) in
Brooklyn, at the Kent Theatre.