Blackwater Lane, Based on a B.A. Parris Novel

Cass Anderson would be a perfect heroine for a Mary Roberts Rinehart “Had I But Known” mystery. She is rich, sensitive, and has a history of mental health issues. She also lives in a big, remote manor. Naturally, it is under renovation and the security system is dicey. However, she is married to the protective Matthew, but he starts to worry she needs protecting from herself in Jeff Celentano’s Blackwater Lane, based on B.A. Parris’s novel The Breakdown, which releases tomorrow in theaters.

Being England’s wealthiest high school drama teacher, the well-heeled Anderson promises her husband she will not take the sketchy Blackwater Lane shortcut home after celebrating the last day of school with her colleagues. Of course, it’s late, it’s rainy, and she’s had a few, so she does anyway. She does not have an accident herself, but she notices a car suspiciously parked by the side of the road and the woman inside looks extremely sleepy.

It turns out that was her best-friend Rachel’s co-worker, who was indeed murdered. At first, she is hesitant to mention it, because of her promise to Matthew. However, the police receive a tip that she was there. Subsequently, she starts seeing a mysterious figure watching her from the palatial grounds and a shadowy woman seems to haunt to tarp-strewn wing under renovation. As she remembers relatively mundane things differently than those around her, Matthew worries she might be headed towards another mental breakdown (see, there were two meanings to the word in Parris’s original title).

Anderson’s big creaky manor would be a great setting for a true gothic horror, but it really is more of a yarn in the tradition of Rinehart’s The Bat. There are two twists horror fans will immediately suspect. One is too ambitious for this film, which necessarily leaves the other.

Ruthless: Dermot Mulroney vs. Human Traffickers

Weirdly politicized critics might not acknowledge human trafficking is a problem, but the sound of money is likely to produce a lot of Sound of Freedom knock-offs, wherein human traffickers are brought to justice. That means the timing should be nice for this payback thriller, which was probably well on its way when the Jim Caviezel hit released. The victims are a little older, but the crime of trafficking is still unforgivably vile in Art Camacho’s Ruthless, which releases tomorrow on VOD.

Wrestling coach Harry Sumner is still reeling from the murder of his daughter, so he is not inclined to ignore clear signs of physical abuse on his student, Catia Madson. Since the principal discourages making an official report, Coach Sumner pays a not so friendly visit to her mother’s thuggish boyfriend. Of course, the system protects creeps like Tom, so while the cops are arresting Sumner for breaking his arm, Tom sells Catia to his human trafficking associates.

Fortunately, the decent Det. Chuck Monaghan, who worked his daughter’s case, remembers Sumner and runs sufficient interference to keep him out of jail. Of course, he warns Sumner to stay away from Tom, but the coach has other ideas. Thanks to a few more broken arms, Sumner follows Catia’s trail to Las Vegas, where the slimy Dale Remington auctions teen girls through his luxury boutique hotel.

Camacho’s screenplay (co-written with James Dean Simington, Javier Reyna, and Koji Steven Sakai) is pretty simplistic and formulaic, but lead actor Dermot Mulroney treats these dead-serious themes with the respect and gravity they deserve. He burns with moral outrage and traumatic grief. Mulroney works a lot and Ruthless is probably not even his most prestigious release of the week, but he is able to really identify with and express Sumner’s inner angst.

Agent Game

Covert ops is a tough business, because there is so much expendability built in—and everyone is always expendable to someone above them. At least, that is the cynical view of intelligence services presented in this film. Fair or not, Kavinsky’s team was recruited to take a fall, but he maybe picks up on the mission’s bad vibes before it is too late in Grant S. Johnson’s Agent Game, which releases this Friday in theaters and on VOD.

Olsen is a high-ranking “deep state” CIA administrator, who is having a bad day, judging from the prologue, showing him firing off shots on the streets of DC. It will take multiple, confusing flashbacks to explain how he reached this point. Somehow, it involves Kavinsky’s team of misfits, whom Olsen personally recruited to snatch and grab an unidentified target.

Then, there are the flashbacks to a black site in an undisclosed Eastern European country, where veteran officers Bill and Harris are interrogating Omar, who was formerly an American-backed revolutionary leader, but the agency seems to think he has gone over to the dark jihadist side. The thing is, the two old hands have been doing this long enough to know Omar’s denials are the truth. However, Visser, Olsen’s loyal enforcer wants them to just bury him and sign-off on the agency’s suspicions.

It would be nice to see a new film that actually celebrated the sacrifices of American intelligence personnel, instead of demonizing, but this is not that film. Nevertheless, there is a lot of surprisingly tense intrigue, especially that focused on Bill and Harris in the black site. Eventually, screenwriter Tyler W. Konney and Mike Langer tie everything together, but viewers almost need to take notes to keep track of the various timelines.

Be that as it may, Jason Isaacs and Dermot Mulroney are terrific as the two dubious interrogators. They are credibly smart and world-weary. If there is anyone viewers will identify with in this film, it would be them. It might be frustrating type-casting for him, but Barkhad Abdi (from Captain Phillips) is also quite good as the unfortunate Omar. Scheming against them, Annie Ilonzeh makes a strong, forceful antagonist as Visser. However, Mel Gibson is more than a bit over the top spouting good-old-boy-isms as the villainous Olsen.

Careful What You Wish For: Welcome to Lake Lure

It is summer—the time when movies assume all teens turn into hormonal-charged Neanderthals. Granted, puberty is not so conducive to good decision making, but you would expect more from Doug Martin, since he looks nearly as old as his parents. Regardless, Martin is in for a throwback 1980s-style summer vacation of fun, sun, sex, and a dead body. Fortunately, the very married Lena Harper is hot, making her worth the trouble for the smitten Martin. However, he has no idea how deep to doo-doo will get in Elizabeth Allen Rosenbaum’s Careful What You Wish For (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

Martin is eighteen and chiseled—yet never been kissed. It must be his personality. The sullen youth and his parents will be enjoying several months of summer vacation at Lake Lure (real name) in neighborly Rutherford County, North Carolina. Speaking of neighbors, a new couple have just moved in and Martin cannot stop ogling hot blonde trophy wife Lena Harper. Rather awkwardly, her super-loaded husband Elliott hires Martin to refurbish his vintage yacht. Elliott Harper is such an obnoxious, abusive, nouveau riche venture capitalist, he is just begging to get killed, which will happen soon enough, once Martin and Mrs. Harper become secret lovers.

Of course, Lena Harper assures Martin it was an accident. Given the suspicious circumstances, he duly disposes of the body. Salt-of-the-earth “Sheriff Big Jack” is definitely not inclined to make waves, so that probably would have been the end of it, had the insurance investigator not turned up. You know there was a big policy and who the sole beneficiary will be, but it is all news to Martin. From there, things get very Double Indemnity for him, but not nearly as stylish.

Frankly, CWYWF would be a ton of fun if savored with a dozen or so beach housemates over a long weekend, but it would just be weird to watch it in a theater. It would have been cheesy in the eighties. That’s all well and good, but there is no point in viewing it when you don’t feel comfortable talking back to the screen.

Sorry kids, Nick Jonas just doesn’t work as eighteen-year-old Martin. He looks like a gym rat in his late twenties and has the screen presence of a socially stunted twelve-year-old. Isabel Lucas’s Lena Harper is similarly lovely but entirely substance-free. At least Dermot Mulroney seems to be having a blast snarling at Jonas and Lucas while munching on the scenery. Paul Sorvino also does his thing as Sheriff Big Jack, even though he hardly seems the good old boy type.

Oh those silly Millennials. They really will fall for anything. Of course the rest of us are so far ahead of the film, it takes Chris Frisina’s screenplay about one hundred twenty-five minutes to catch up to where we know it is going. Not really recommended per se, the ironic and/or nostalgic should still give it a hung-over look-see when the time is right. For now, it opens this Friday (6/10) in New York, at the Cinema Village.