Crossbreed takes place about 40 years in the future. Our president, Vivica A. Fox, along with her Secretary of Defense, Daniel Baldwin, send a team of mercenaries led by Cherry Hill, NJ's own Stink Fisher to find a possible alien bio weapon that is being kept on a space station orbiting the earth by a nefarious corporation. As always in situations like these, things aren't exactly what they seem, and now Fisher's team needs to find a way to get out alive and back to the President to tell her what happened.
Mitch at The Video Vacuum has talked about grading DTV films on a curve, and I think that's especially true of an indie film that's as earnest as this one was. I think overall I enjoyed myself, and that's the best you can ask for. It has a runtime of about 86 minutes, but with credits it's more like 77 minutes, and even then we had moments where the dialog felt repetitive, or conversations went on a bit too long, meaning we maybe had enough material for a pilot to a syndicated TV series--but again, one that I would have wanted to watch. Vivica A. Fox was great as the president, Daniel Baldwin great as her Secretary of Defense, and I thought Stink Fisher was that leading man/hero-type that we instantly want to root for, which is what something like this hinges on for me. I also liked way the alien was done, and thought the CGI special effects were really good as well. Sci-Fi is not easy to do on a limited budget, but I think this one gets it right much more than it gets it wrong.
The email to the screener I got only mentioned that Vivica A. Fox was the president, not that she became the first ever African American woman to play the President in a live action feature film with this role. We've had African American women as the President on TV, and Penny Johnson Jerald played the president in a Justice League animated movie, Gods and Monsters, but here we have the first African American woman playing the President in a live action feature film, and it's a low-budget DTV film. The thing is, there was nothing gimmicky about this, out of the cast, Vivica A. Fox was best suited to be the President, and until I found out that she was the first African American woman ever to do this, I saw the trailer and just looked at it as "of course she's the President, she fits in this role." On top of that, if you look at her imdb bio, she's been grinding out a lot of movies--many of them with someone else renown for how many movies he grinds out, director David DeCoteau--which is something we at the DTVC always respect, and I think further highlights that she earned this additional feather in her cap in having this role and this distinction to her name.
It looks like in the history of the DTVC, this is only the second Daniel Baldwin movie we've covered, the other being Knight Moves with DTVC Hall of Famer Christopher Lambert, which we reviewed all the way back in 2007. I think in terms of Baldwin brothers, that ties him with Stephen, who also has two, and then Alec and William both have none. If you're getting a Baldwin brother for your movie, you can't go wrong with Daniel, and he shows that here. Like Fox, he's not in a lot of scenes, and almost all of them are with her, but other than the action, their scenes were some of the most fun to watch, which is what you want if you pony up the cash to cast them in a lower-budget film like this. In addition to these two, Vernon Wells is in the film at the very beginning, and then he's done.
A lot of the way I see this film packaged is as a throwback to the 80s and 90s sci-fi alien thrillers, but I think the problem with this compared to those, is that the alien action here is quick and doesn't comprise a lot of the film. When I think of Alien and its sequels, I think of movies in the 2-hour range that not only have the great effects and performances, but they also have a Hitchcockian quality where tension is built up, then either deflated or something big happens, then we relax and wind ourselves up for it to happen again. Even a movie like Creature with Klaus Kinski that we looked at on here went over 90 minutes and had more of that element. This was more like I had some fun moments, and then that was it, it didn't have that extra depth that those other movies had, so I don't think just because there's an alien on ship picking people off for the last 20 minutes that we can say it's in the tradition of that kind of film. Again, this felt more like it sets up for the start of a syndicated TV series--one that I would watch if it were that--than it does an Alien. I know Alien is a classic that was made on a major Hollywood budget, that's why I threw Creature in as a further comparison, because I think even that one had more of the depth and actual alien-person tension that I want in something made in that tradition.
If you go to imdb now, Stink Fisher's bio has his picture, but when I first saw this it didn't, and I didn't know who he was. I did also see that he's from Cherry Hill, NJ, near where I live in South Philadelphia, and when I heard him talk and heard the accent I'm so used to hearing down here, I knew it had to be him. As I mentioned above, his leading man character was exactly what I'd want from a film like this, and to some extent I think was underutilized. There were times where I think we focused more on supporting characters who weren't as compelling, and the result was that a 77-minute movie had moments that dragged. This is where if we had more alien-person tension, Fisher is someone we could have leaned on to make us buy in and care if this alien picks someone else off; or care if they were successful if the writers added a new attempt to thwart the alien. To make a movie like this work, you need the big names that are only in it for a short time like Fox and Baldwin to make the most of their short time, which we got; but you also need performances like Fisher's keep us invested when those bigger names aren't on-screen, which we also got.
And which is why, ultimately, I can say I liked this movie and would recommend it. It's an independent movie done on a smaller scale, but still big, earnest aspirations, wanting to get it right, and I think more often than not it does. Not only that, but it makes cinematic history. This is currently on Prime and Tubi, so you can check it out on one of those and support independent film making.
For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5258074
No comments:
Post a Comment