Hammer(Video On Demand)
Starring Will Patton, Mark O’Brian
Directed by Christian Sparkes
Rating: * ½
Hammer is one of those bogus thrillers that draws inspiration from Guy Ritchie’s savagely satirical and brutal heist films. It looks as sham as those pitiable Shatrughan Sinha and Shah Rukh Khan clones who amuse passerby with nothing better to do.
I doubt the Canadian director Christian Sparks thinks of his cinema the way I have described it above. For all he knows Sparks is a genius whose vision is beyond the understanding of ignoramuses like us.
I am willing to accept my inability to connect with the film’s characters and main drama. They seem to be playing a game of cat and mouse with a kind of selfconscious fanfaronade that players assume in ads selling high-end automobiles. Not a single authentic note is struck as Will Patton and Mark O’Brian playing father and son try to dodge bullets and dangers in a sleepy town that has seen better days.
It all begins with a bag crammed with money and heist gone horribly wrong.The two main actors don’t seem to mind the offkey narrative tone. The direction is at least two sizes too small for its ambitious story of money and betrayal. The kinetic visuals are meant to draw us into a world of glum violence. But nothing works. As father Will Patton tries to decode his son’s criminal mind mom keeps asking, ‘What is going on?!”
That’s what we’d like to know.
Don’t subject yourself to this kind of on-the-edge torture during these hard times. Watch old episodes of Friends instead. They have a much deeper understanding of human relationships than this shallow action drama where the characters do what they do only because the camera is recording their inchoate activities.
