Peter Bradshaw 

Bushwick review – warmongers and wooden actors lead siege on Brooklyn

A timely premise and some smark visuals aren’t enough to fully rescue this pedestrian thriller in which Texan secessionists spark civil war in the US
  
  

Brittany Snow and Dave Bautista
I’m with Stupe … Brittany Snow as Lucy and Dave Bautista as army vet Stupe in Bushwick. Photograph: Lyle Vincent/Sundance Institute

Some dodgy acting and iffy line-readings put a downer on this action thriller with a very topical slant. It’s about a new civil war – with Texas leading a secessionist movement – heralded by an all-out invasion of Bushwick in Brooklyn, New York.

Brittany Snow plays Lucy, a college student visiting her grandmother who is terrified to find herself in a war zone. There is only one person who can protect her: a huge combat veteran called Stupe (Dave Bautista), who has a painful backstory.

There is something interestingly surreal about the Call of Duty visuals created here in a quasi-continuous single take. But the political dimension of the movie is referred to very fleetingly, in just a few lines of dialogue. Other than that it is a standard-issue combat movie, with the arbitrary narrative device of an “evacuation area” that the principals need to reach. And sadly the acting and dialogue needed a little work.

 

Leave a Comment

Required fields are marked *

*

*