JADE -- Agonizing Action-Thriller Riff Bores, Frustrates

Review by Daniel Lima

For as long as the direct-to-video market has existed, the direct-to-video action thriller has provided a springboard for stuntpeople to use their meager means and ample abilities to deliver the simple, kinetic excitement that so eludes bloated Hollywood productions. It would be wonderful if Jade, the new film from stuntman-turned-director Chis Bamford, were another laudable entry into that canon. Sadly, it barely commits to even the low ambition of a stale pastiche of the kind of postmodern genre film that has been old hat for at least a decade.

Nominally, the film follows the titular character, a reformed criminal who finds herself thrust into the center of a struggle for a mysterious hard disk. Caught between organized crime, corrupt cops, and covert government agencies, she must use her wits and prodigious combat skills to survive… or something to that effect. Describing the plot in such a coherent way gives the impression that it is cohesive and propulsive. It is not.

An animated cutscene kicks things off, explaining its titular character’s backstory while remain frustratingly opaque, nondescript, and cliched. The first proper scene sees her speaking to her brother’s widow, which would be emotionally fraught if the audience had any emotional connection to these characters. Then the film skills ahead twenty-four hours, introducing an entirely new character sitting with lead Shaina West, discussing how crazy the last day has been. It then cuts back to the action. You don’t see that character again for another forty minutes.

A nonlinear crime story playing off the audience’s own familiarity with cinematic archetypes and tropes is nothing new. Pulp Fiction, Ghost Dog, The Boondock Saints, these have been around since the 1990s. Jade makes a paltry effort to evoke those films, throwing in some halfhearted references to Asian action cinema via stock sound effects, so trite they border on racist. Those films, however, used that audience familiarity to subvert expectations, to ground distinct creative voices, to explore how we relate to art. At the very least, they were kind of cool.

No surprise that this cannot be as boundary pushing as those earlier films, but there is only the most cursory attempt to even capture a consistent mood. Jade swaps between a lighthearted, self-aware romp where characters reference Bruce Leroy and Wesley Snipes movies, and a dark and gritty underworld tale. In the hands of a filmmaker like Tarantino (though I am loathe to praise him too much), this balancing act is possible.

Here, there is a smug satisfaction underlying all the lame gags, the tame violence, the empty exposition, that makes it even more aggravating. Simply referencing other works isn’t particularly funny, and none of the characters are fleshed out enough to even be likeable, so it fails on that front. Most scenes amount to just characters repeating their goals and desires back at each other ad nauseam, with no time spent building out the world and the familiar DTV lack of a specific visual style, so it never feels particularly grimy or dangerous. Ultimately, the film never does more that gesture towards the vague form of a certain kind of film, and so the attempts at postmodern comedy and brooding crime drama have exactly the same texture. Which is to say, none at all.

The one potential saving grace is the action, as Bamford is an experience stunt professional who often casts stunt professionals in his films. Star Shaina West is, to her credit, a good physical presence, and there is a fight scene with Marcus Vinicios Maciel that displays a sense of rhythm and purpose that the rest of the film otherwise lacks. Unfortunately, most of what passes for action in the film is lame, static gunfights where no one gets hit; the amount of time that West spends standing straight up and looking around as Aftereffects bullet impacts fill the frame is truly ludicrous.

The fight choreography is decent enough, but undoubtedly budgetary constraints limit the ability to shoot in interesting spaces, and time to craft truly impressive brawls. The climax of the film is an agonizingly long set piece that has West walking down what seems to be the same stretch of barren hallway for an eternity, gunning and cutting down nameless mooks practically sauntering over to be killed. At first, it seems ambitious; within a minute, the scene outstays its welcome. No challenge is presented, no modulating rhythm that creates narrative tension. Things just happen, then it ends.

That’s a good encapsulation of Jade itself, as its lack of any sense of direction or conviction proves its own undoing. Towards the end of the film, after that tiresome final set piece, a scorecard appears reading “Jade: 37 | Thugz: 0”. This joins the likes of Bush’s “Mission Accomplished” photoshoot in misguided, undeserving, self-aggrandizing praise for a job not well done.  

Jade is available on digital February 18.

Rating: 1/5