In short: Kill Chain (2019)

A bag of diamonds makes its way through the hands of various killers and lowlifes (played by lovely actors like Enrico Colantoni or the generally okay Ryan Kwanten) until it ends up in the hands of a Woman in Red (Anabelle Acosta) – the film’s using descriptions like this for most of the characters in its credits though (or because) most of them have several names – who wanders into a decrepit hotel run by a guy with a violent past (Nicolas Cage). The Lady’s trying to outrun a, nay, The Very Bad Woman (Angie Cepeda), and the hotel manager might just be the guy to help her out.

This interesting attempt of using traditional tropes and clichés of movies and books about violent men and women to turn their well-known plots existential and archetypal as written and directed by Ken Sanzel is probably simply a bit too cheap and quickly made to quite achieve what it seems to set out to do. The pacing drags sometimes, and its self-consciousness can border on the smug (or, if you’re easier annoyed by cleverness than me, step across the line quite a bit), with some of the deep and meaningful talk not being quite as deep and meaningful as it’s supposed to sound, the dialogue straining for a gravitas it can’t quite reach.

There’s something about the movie, though. In part, I’m charmed by how its shaggy dog tale structure reminds me pleasantly of films like Winchester 73 (or eternal favourite Fish Story), even though I would have preferred if it hadn’t gone the 2010s movie road of everything in it being part of some clever plan that’s actually less plausible than mere chance. Then there’s the fact that I genuinely still enjoy the archetypes and tropes the film so clearly also adores, as I do Kill Chain’s love for scenes of people telling tales (with more than a handful of meanings to them). And even though this was clearly made on the comparatively cheap, the film features quite a bit of acting talent apparently getting into the spirit of the piece very well, Cage underplaying more than typical yet still applying himself, and everyone selling their archetypes wonderfully.


Sanzel’s pretty good at visually creating a decrepit little part of Tijuana (clearly situated more in a Mexico of pulp imagination than the real place, and meant to be there) out of some ugly buildings, cheap neon signs and a lot of grimy looking darkness, the sort of place your noir character flees to before the past catches up on them again.