Hollow Point

"Women in Refrigerators" is a term coined by Gail Simone in 1999 in response to yet another comic book storyline where the male hero's love interest is killed off (killed and stuffed in a fridge this time) early in a story to motivate him into action. It's one of the most overused tropes in storytelling. It's lazy, it's offensive and it's boring. It happened 5 minutes into Hollow Point and it's sets the tone for the rest of this bag of piss of a movie.

A woman and her daughter are murdered while taking a shortcut across the barrios of Los Angeles and a grieving husband by the name of Nolan Cooray wants revenge. It ends badly for him and in the aftermath he stumbles across a group of vigilantes led by Hank Carmac, lawyer by day, justice seeker by night. Nolan and Hank team up to wash the scum from the streets of the City Of Angels.

Hollow Point is atrocious. Right wing reactionary piss. Don't watch it. I did. I'm an idiot. I'll watch any auld toss but I felt bad about myself after this. Bad in a "What am i doing?" kind of way. It's just awful. Reliable actors like Spike Lee's muse Roger Guenveur Smith, Bill Duke, Michael Pare and Jay Mohr (totally unrecognisable from his 90's heyday) appear on screen, mumble their lines, throw in a "motherfucker" or two and then disappear for vast swathes of screentime. Actors there solely for a paycheque will always make themselves known fast. The rest of the movie is polluted with soul destroyingly awful turns from Luke Goss (yup, Bros) who's still trying and failing to be an action star ever since Blade II gave him a taste for it and a despicable Dijan Jay who's awfulness I can't put into words. Imagine an actor who could make Jean Claude Van Damme seem like Al Pacino and you're close.

Chad and Evan Law, brothers and co-writers are to blame for this puddle of putrescence. They've taken a revenge story that's been done a million times before and somehow banjaxed it. None of it makes sense, it's illogical as hell. Character motivations change like a Limerick breeze and are constantly contradictory. Nolan, early in the film, is out for revenge and shoots up a party full of bad guys. Later on he pleads with his new found vigilante chums not to do the same only to turn around, moments later, and torture a bad guy for information, that he then feels bad about using. Hollow Point is a constant stream of this nonsense. You can feel the writers striving for depth but all they find is the shitty silt at the bottom.

At it's most basic level it doesn't even work as an action flick. It's horribly shot, clunkily choreographed, riddled with godawful cheapo cgi squibs and blood and terribly paced. That horrible muted blue grey colour palette so beloved of DTV film makers gets a run out too. I can't get my head around who thinks it looks good. It's horrible and would leave you bored long before you realise the story is draining the life out of your veins. It's a 90's throwback but it consists of the worst parts of 90's action. All it's missing is a slow motion shot of our "heroes" running from an explosion. Oh and a mullet. I kind of wish there was a mullet in here tbh. At least it would give us something to laugh at.

Hollow Point is garbage. Don't be a fool like me. Save your precious time for something better like stepping on a piece of lego in your bare feet. A far more enjoyable experience. UGH.