Movie Review: ‘BLACK OUT’

[youtube id=”3zd0cjpxL0A” width=”600″ height=”350″]

Black Out, billed as an action/crime/comedy flick, comes at us from the Netherlands and it starts fast and never really lets up. This is a very good thing. Let’s face it, these movies only have so many plot lines and they’ve all been done before. Director Arne Toonen keeps it fresh and lively, which helps propel Black Out beyond the tripe American cinema is churning out in this particular genre mash-up.

What’s in store for you with Black out? Well, here’s the basic premise: Jos, retired mobster, is getting married tomorrow. Today, he wakes up next to a corpse and the murder weapon lying between them. After assessing the situation for a moment, he proceeds to do what any honest man would do: he stuffs the body into a piece of luggage, cramming everything in but the head. Enterprising Jos finds a smaller piece of luggage, cuts a head-sized hole in the bottom, and lets corpse wear it as a hat. Oh, and Jos has no memory of the murder or most of last night. Now Jos has to find out who the victim is and why he’s dead. Did I mention there’s 20 kilos of cocaine missing and Jos still wants to make it to his wedding on time? Along the way, the life of his fiance will be in jeopardy, he’ll find out who his true friends are, and

Game on, viewers. Game. On.

The clichéd characters are the freshest part of Black Out (and yes, I realize that’s an oxymoron), and like the plot lines, you’ve seen all these characters before. Only you haven’t, not quite like this. Toonen, taking source material from the novel “Merg & Been” by Gerben Hellinga, owns the clichés and twists them into original people. They each have their own personality quirks that bring something different to the table and help drive the movie forward, so the movie isn’t just shifting us from gunfight to gunfight (there’s only one in the whole movie) to maximize the action.

Toonen utilizes flashbacks to flesh out his characters in a way that reminded me of Tarantino. Many try to do this and fail miserably, but not Toonen. He knows the strength is in his actors and the dialogue and he uses it to his advantage. Wait until the 24:00 minute mark when the two female enforcers, Petra and Charity, have a lengthy conversation about the utter lack of feminism in gangster movies. This goes on as they apply makeup in the rearview mirror, wearing short, slinky dresses, and high heels. Afterward, they proceed to trash a mark’s car after he calls one of them a bitch. It’s a classic, dialogue heavy scene pinpointing exactly who these girls are.

The only character complaint I have concerns the police. My toddler is smarter than these cops and that’s not saying much, since he only speaks in complete sentences about half the time. The film tries to pin this stupidity on a character flaw, but it doesn’t wash, and only diminishes the overall quality.

That aside, the acting is solid throughout the film. No one overacts (or underacts) and the actors carry the film in fine style. They’re all believable in their roles and a rare chemistry between them helps the movie work as well as it does. Raymond Thiry, who plays Jos, is excellent. Bas Keijzer as Bobbie and Simon Armstrong as Vlad also deserve special mentions for their performances.

As a final nod to the sandbox he’s playing in, Tooten includes several homages (I counted at least three) to the American films he obviously grew up watching. This isn’t much different from Evil Dead playing on the TV in A Nightmare on Elm Street. After you watch the movie, leave me a comment with the ones you find and we’ll compare notes.

In the end, Black Out isn’t breaking any new cinematic ground, but neither is it defiling the works that came before. It stays true to its roots without launching into parody or slapstick and thus turning itself into a caricature. You’re not going to feel like you’ve wasted 90 minutes of your life and in today’s movie climate that’s a winner in my book.

Black Out releases on Premium VOD 2/21 on XBOX, PlayStation, iTunes, Amazon Instant Video, Vudu, Google Play, and YouTube.