“Chase” has a clever premise that shoots itself in the foot with some really crappy dialogue. This should have had a few more rewrites before production began.
It’s a shame, really, because the story is a corker: a beautiful bride, Lauren (Jannsen) is kidnapped on her wedding day by the best man, Drake (Christino). He has a good excuse. Her groom, Jesse (Zucchino) is a top dog in the local crime family, and he wants to declare war on a rival gang. Because of a truce, he can’t…but the truce will be broken if one of his family is killed by the other gang. Too bad for Lauren, she’s expendable.
Lauren takes this all-pretty well, especially when she learns that Drake, who is second banana to the top dog, is doing it for love. He weally, weally woves her…ack…sorry. The dialogue is atrocious, a blend of pseudo hipness and the poetry stylings of a Hallmark card.
Ok, I’m back. Jesse calls in a hired gun named Mad House Jim, a bald psycho with a goatee and a truck that seems to run on blood. Drake drops off Lauren with the one man he feels he can trust, Monk (Johnson) and they head off for Mexico, leaving Drake to face the Mad House in a game of guns and trucks chicken that screams bad John Woo.
This is a well made little short. The actors do what they can with the (ugh) script, Jannsen being the most interesting as the only woman in the cast (the men are too stereotyped, and therefore less interesting). I would have liked to have seen a little more fire between her character and Drake; as it is, he seems like he is escorting the sister of a good friend as a favor.
I think with a decent budget and an extensive (I mean, extensive) rewrite and expansion to full length, this would become a cult classic, the kind of film people line up to see on Saturday night. Of course, that’s just my opinion.
