“Trigger Point,” a new action movie starring Barry Pepper and now on VOD, is stylish looking and features good actors but suffers from a bad case of been there, done that.
Pepper is Lewis, a retiree leading a quiet life in a quiet upstate New York town. His days are spent at the local diner, flirting with waitress Janice (Nazneen Contractor) and sipping tea at the quaint local book store.
His home life, however, isn’t so quaint. His cabin-in-the-woods is a veritable fortress, complete with high tech surveillance gear and drone security.
Turns out Lewis is actually Nicolas Shaw, a former superspy for a shady operation called The Agency. In hiding after his actions resulted in the assassinations of his entire team, he’s brought back into the dangerous world of international intrigue by his former handler Elias Kane (Colm Feore).
Kane’s daughter Monica (Eve Harlow) has been kidnapped by the shadowy figure who may have been responsible for the methodical murder of Shaw’s team.
So, just when he thought he was out, Shaw is dragged back to the underworld to rescue Monica and search down the man responsible for his professional and personal undoing.
“Trigger Point” director Brad Turner has a long and varied list of television credits, including episodes of “MacGyver,” “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.” and “Hawaii Five-O.” He knows how to shoot action and where to put the camera so the movie looks good when the bullets are flying.
He’s also good at casting interesting looking, solemn-faced actors like Pepper, Feore and Carlo Rota, all of whom have tread this territory before.
It’s in the storytelling that things go south. Weighed down by tough guy banalities, there is very little in “Trigger Point” that we haven’t seen before and done better. The actors breathe whatever life they can into this collection of clichés but no amount of grim determination can elevate this above the level of a forgettable direct to video time waster.
“Jump, Darling,” now on VOD, is a family drama that looks at three generations through the lens of three very different characters.
Russell Hill (Thomas Duplessie) is a young Toronto man whose dreams of being an actor are put on hold while he pursues a career in drag. His longtime boyfriend Justin (Andrew Bushell) doesn’t approve. He thinks the drag shows are a variety act, beneath Russell’s talent. “He wanted to be an actor and now his fear of ambition has become bar star.” One break-up later, Russell packs up and moves to rural Prince Edward County in Eastern Ontario to bunk with his sickly grandmother Margaret (Cloris Leachman).
It’s an adjustment. Margaret has dementia, his domineering mother Ene (Linda Kash) is a dark cloud—“I barely hear from you,” she says, “and now you’re squatting with your grandmother.”—and Hannah’s Hovel is the only gay bar within a hundred clicks. Ene wants to put Margaret in a care home, a safe place where she can be cared for or fall down the stairs. Margaret doesn’t want to trade her home for “a prison,” and certainly doesn’t want to live with Ene.
To keep Margaret out of a home, and himself in one, Russell becomes the elderly lady’s primary caregiver as he navigates like in his new small town.
The feature debut of writer/director Philip J. Connell revolves around a trio of characters. Ene is given the least to do, stuck as she is, trying to manage both Margaret and Russell, but Kash brings humanity to the tightly wound character.
The stars of the show are Duplessie and Leachman in her final leading role.
As Russell, Duplessie subtly portrays the pain that brought him to this point in his life. It’s nice, charismatic work that finds an interesting duality between Russell and his drag character Fishy Falters. What could have been a fish-out-of-water story is elevated by a performance that is about courage, empathy and staying true to your passions.
Like Duplessie, Leachman finds the vulnerability in Margaret, creating a character who is at once frail but driven by the strength of her convictions. It is a tremendous late-in-life performance that doesn’t rely on old codger tricks. Instead, Leachman allows subtlety to fule her performance. Quiet but feisty, her facial expressions tell her story as much as the dialogue.
“Jump, Darling” features a couple of show-stopping musical numbers from Fishy Falters but succeeds because of its focus on the family and their dynamics.
As the title suggests “The Second Time Around” is about taking another kick at the can. In this case it is a late-in-life chance for romance between widowers Katherine Mitchell (Linda Thorson) and Isaac Shapiro (Stuart Margolin).
Katherine is a woman of a certain age obsessed with the music of Puccini, Verdi and Mozart. When a broken hip lands her in an assisted care facility, her dream of visiting the La Scala Opera House in Milan is pushed to the background. As she recuperates she meets Isaac, a grumpy old man and former tailor. A shared love of music and dancing brings them together, but the side effects of aging conspire to keep them apart. Is love, as Frank Sinatra sang, “lovelier the second time around,” and will they fulfill Katherine’s dream of seeing an opera in Milan?
“The Second Time Around” is a gentle romantic drama made special by performances from seasoned pros Thorson, Margolin who bring chemistry and empathy to their characters and Jayne Eastwood in a supporting role.
They give spark to a story that radiates a certain warmth but is, nonetheless, on the predictable side. Combatting the narrative’s unsurprising trajectory is director Leon Marr’s stylistic flourishes. He takes his time with the story, allowing Katherine and Isaac’s reminisces room to breathe in long, uninterrupted takes. His lip-synced recreations of operas are slightly surreal but amply display Katherine’s love of the music.
Those touches, coupled with solid performances and a realistic view of old age give “The Second Time Around” resonance.
