Scorched Earth takes place in a post-apocalyptic future where, due to global warming, people need to filter their water and wear masks with ground silver to avoid getting sick. Enter Carano as a bounty hunter, who decides to infiltrate a compound filled with baddies, hoping to bring them all in. That kind of thing usually goes well, until it doesn't, and when it doesn't, the question is will Carano survive? If she does, those baddies better watch out.
As I mentioned, the reviewer at Ebert's site killed this. I don't know if I would have been as harsh, but I had concerns with it as well. It's a standard futuristic western that really doesn't do anything new. It relies more on the quirks in its setting, in particular the fact that you need a mask to go outside, than relying on the star power and the story. From a story standpoint, we know pretty much everything that's going to happen, which is fine, but that's when this needs to be a Carano vehicle, and it wasn't that. I think the limitations set by the air not being good and the infiltrating the baddies' lair storyline hampered what Carano could do, which left us with a film that could have been led by anyone.
That then begs the question, what would you have done? If I've got Carano, I want a good fight choreographer and hand-to-hand fights. If I'm going western, I'm either going traditional Yojimbo paradigm, or maybe something more stylish; but definitely something that establishes that Carano is totally bad ass, the way a Jesse V. Johnson or Isaac Florentine establishes early on that Adkins is a total bad ass. The opening sequence where she takes out a bounty was really good, and if they could have continued that level of action throughout, I think we could have had something. Instead it was all cat and mouse game with her trying to keep her cover. If the same thing had happened with a Scott Adkins film, we'd be complaining about it too.
When we think of Carano in Haywire, there was a sense that she could be the next big action star--not just female action star, but action star period. Since then she's had some small parts in big budget flicks like Deadpool and Fast and Furious 6, combined with some DTV flicks like this one. I said in my Kickboxer: Vengeance post that she should have been the lead in that one, but I think that maybe shows that we haven't come as far as we'd like to think in having women action leads. It's one thing to have non-action leads in female-centered action flicks like Captain Marvel and Wonder Woman, but the film industry has an aversion to having a woman who can fight be an action lead. Zoe Bell is another example. For studios that are afraid to greenlight films like that, it's important to note that after Dolph, no one gets more likes on my Instagram than Cynthia Rothrock. She outdoes Seagal, Van Damme, you name it. Hopefully with Carano's work in The Manadalorian, filmmakers will take notice. There has to be a China O'Brien or Rage and Honor project out there for Carano, and if it happens, I think it'll be big.
The futuristic Western is a great idea on a budget, because you can do it on the cheap, there are probably already turnkey sets and props available, you just need a script, get the cast and crew out there, and shoot it. It's deceptively simple, but the problem is, the Western is harder to pull off than we think. I was looking through my Western tag to see what had worked in the past. The best one I've done is Django from 1966. I mean, would it have been so bad to just remake Django with Carano in the lead? For a futuristic take, there was Cold Harvest, directed by Isaac Florentine and starring Gary Daniels and Bryan Genesse. That one had the sci-fi aspect, but was also a mix of Hong Kong action and the Western. What if they had done something like that here and given Carano a solid martial arts baddie to fight? Why not Bryan Genesse?
Finally, this also had John Hannah, who I'm a big fan of, and I really liked his role here as Carano's mentor and the town doctor. He was a great choice for that Western character who has seen a lot, but can't pass up a good fight, especially when it's supporting some he cares about. The problem is, we lose him for large portions of the film because of the whole infiltrating the baddie compound plot device. If you're going to have a Hannah, and make him as cool as he was here, it can be an issue if the other characters aren't as compelling while he's sitting on the sidelines. That could have been where Genesse helped.
That's two Genesse mentions in two paragraphs and he wasn't even in the film, so it's time to wrap this up. Unfortunately this film was too heavy on plot and didn't lean on Carano's action enough to make it work. Hopefully there's an action film coming that will really allow her to shine, but this just wasn't it.
For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2392748
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