Styx (2001)

The Worst Film Ever

It isn't all that great, actually. Really cheesy and very predicable of how certain scenes are gonna turn play out. However, I guess that's the charm of it all, because I would consider this one of my guilty pleasures.

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

Blistering performances.

Nelson (Peter Weller), Mike (Angus Macfadyen), and Art (Bryan Brown) are part of a crew. They do an armed bank robbery. It doesn't go exactly right and a guard is killed. They are about to kill the incompetent drug-addicted gun hire when he shoots first. They crash and Art is injured. Afterward, Nelson tries to move on with a normal life. Mike gets into trouble over gambling debts and Nelson is pulled back into doing one last job.This starts with a promising action section. It's inferior cinematically and is more fitting for a TV movie. There is still an explosion, a car chase, and some hope. It is soon obvious that it's not good enough. The action looks more like 80's TV. It's a lot of slow motion and bad dying. These are solid actors. I'm left with the conclusion that director Alex Wright and his South African crew are up to the task of making top rate movies.

Nothing really new and spectacular in this British-American 2001 co-production. A bunch of gangsters are robbing a bank, but during their escape they have got a fatal car accident, only a few survive. Later on, they find together again and are planning their next coup... and all those things are gonna happen that you except from such a standard gangster coup movie - brothers in arms, a blonde femme fatale, a groovy sex scene, a well-planned coup with too many people involved, some more gangsters and shootings lots of revenge, of course...At least "Cold Revenge", as the movie was titled on German TV, avoids copying the fake coolness and hipness of many post Tarantino gangster movies of the last ten years, and Peter Weller and Bryan Brown are doing a fine job, too, but the director fails to find an own, individual style for his gangster drama. There are some nice camera ankles and a thrilling bank robbery in the beginning of the movie, but later on, it all becomes boring and standard in this movie... and just like the tired Weller and Brown, who had their best points of their careers in the late eighties when they starred in the successful "Robocop" and "FX" movies, you are losing interest during this movie... and even Weller's cool Robocop sunglasses can't change that. A missed opportunity.

Weller and Brown make this watchable but that is about all. Loose story of a bank robbery gone awry with Brown left to burn alive in crashed escape vehicle. A few years later Weller is lured into another bank robbery and lo and behold his former partner Brown had escaped the fire and is the brains behind the new scheme. A few little plot twists but the needless car chases and shoots coupled with terrible digital camera work make for a waste.

I admit I started from a false assumption with this film, I thought the story had promise and the leads, especially Weller and Brown would make it enjoyable. Wrong! Every element of the films production comes off as being second rate. Weller and Brown, who are not done any favors by their choice of material, struggle at first, before giving in to complete disinterest. The plot is basic, crims double cross one another for diamonds. This film seems to be double crossing just to fill the ninety or so minutes.The twists and turns are nothing new, predictability renders them a complete yawn. Save your money and put this one back on the shelf.