04th May2022

‘Black Site’ Review

by Phil Wheat

Stars: Michelle Monaghan, Jai Courtney, Jason Clarke, Uli Latukefu, Pallavi Sharda, Phoenix Raei, Lucy Barrett, Todd Lasance, Logan Huffman, Lincoln Lewis, Joey Vieira, Simon Elrahi, Robert Zenca | Written by John Collee, Jinder Ho | Directed by Sophia Banks

A throwback to another era of filmmaking, Black Site (not to be confused with the 2018 Tom Paton film of the same name) follows a group of officers based in a labyrinthine top-secret location called the Citadel, who must fight for their lives against Hatchet, a brilliant and infamous high-value detainee. When he escapes, his mysterious and deadly agenda has far-reaching and dire consequences…

There’s a reason I said this film was a throwback at the start of this review, you see Black Site feels very much like a product of a different time, well at least the script does. There are quips thrown into people’s dialogue that hark back to the catchy one-liners of the movies of Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger. The setting of the film, the Citadel, feels like a riff on films like Stuart Gordon’s Fortress or the more recent Stallone Escape Plan franchise.

And Black Site is all the better for ALL that!

The film is also packed with the kind of over the top violence that marked those classic 80s action films out back in the day. Like bloody, vicious violence; a brutality to some scenes that is unexpected in what many would call, given the headline cast, a Hollywood action thriller. And actor Jason Clarke makes for one hell of a bad guy, stalking the corridors and rooms of the Citadel like a boogeyman you’d see in a slasher movie horror – with the same relentlessness and seemingly indestructibility too! In fact, there are a LOT of parallels between the later Friday the 13th movies and the over-the-top kills of Jason Vorhees and this film’s “boogeyman” Hatchet and how he operates.

Like the aforementioned slasher franchise, Clarke’s Hatchet has a great foil (aka final girl) in Michelle Monaghan’s CIA agent Abigail Trent. Monaghan has experience in the genre, having starred in some of the Mission Impossible films, and that reflects in her performance. It would be a disservice to her to say she’s this film’s John McClane but to some extent that’s the blueprint for these types of characters – she has the same dogged determination in a situation that is not of her making. A situation may I add that is NOT exactly how it appears, something which leads to the possibility of a sequel that flips the script – which I’d definitely be interested in seeing!

If Black Site has any issues it’s in the finale, which becomes a little too reliant on CGI and green screen. Poor CGI and green screen at that. Obviously, this film was shot on a budget and that didn’t extend to blockbuster-movies levels of computer generated imagery and decent green screen work either… and they certainly weren’t going to blow anything up for real given how much THAT costs! It’s a minor niggle in a film that successfully recaptures everything audiences loved about films like Die Hard, Rambo, Predator – pure unadulterated action, gloriously OTT violence and a script that isn’t afraid to have fun. The fact that this one concludes on such a conspiratorial note only solidifies it as a very modern take on the genre. After all, no one can be trusted these days, can they?

***½  3.5/5

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