Tooth & Nail

NOVEMBER 10, 2007

GENRE: CANNIBAL, POST-APOCALYPTIC, SURVIVAL
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (REGULAR SCREENING)

IT HAS BEGUN!

Yes, another “8 Films To Die For” collection is upon us, and like last year, I managed to make it out for one of the films (hey, this site doesn’t make me a red cent, I try to limit how much it COSTS ME to keep it going!). Luckily, my choice, Tooth & Nail, was far better than the one film I saw in theaters last time around (do I really need to mention it by name, again?), though still far from very good.

The key problem with this film is how blatantly obvious the twist is. Let’s see, one of the good guys is killed by an unseen killer, even though the bad guys are a loud, unstealthy and cartoonish lot. Also, their apparent leader (Michael Madsen, once again introduced via a shot of his feet) is killed shortly after he appears. And since it’s obvious Vinnie Jones shot all of his scenes on a break from whatever Guy Ritchie movie he was filming, who will be the “big bad?” And gee, how did this quiet non-threatening blond chick (Rachel Miner, from the not as bad as I expected Penny Dreadful) manage to escape these bloodthirsty cannibals so easily? OHHhhhh......

Also, all of these people have really stupid names, most of them American car models: Neon, Viper, Nova, etc. Why, I dunno. Maybe its a Postman reference. Luckily, otherwise the film doesn't resemble that film at all. Which brings me to my biggest compliment I can give to the film – for once, though it was probably a budgetary limit and not an artistic choice, the post-apocalyptic future looks like it should: the same as it does now. I never got why, in all these “30 years from now, our world fell to shit” movies, that the engineers and designers around the world decided to completely overhaul our transportation and industrial centers, OR (as in Postman), somehow find a way to make the entire world look like a desert. Is putting an elevated subway and designing loud and garish skyscrapers really their solution to combat annihilation? No, in Tooth, the buildings and everything look like they do now, just a bit more rundown and of course, empty. Nice work.

However, they still raided the Mad Max museum when it came to designing the cannibals; even though the good guys wear standard sweaters and jeans, the bad guys took the time to design outlandish metal and leather costumes. Maybe designing them takes their mind off of being so hungry. Also, their motives are a bit unclear – they claim that they are simply hungry, but if that is the case, why do they go to all the trouble hunting their prey? Wouldn’t it be easier to wear some khakis and a polo shirt, walk up to a guy, shoot him and then eat him as you see fit? Oh well, who am I to judge Michael Madsen (who also executive produced)?

The cast is pretty recognizable, which is nice. In addition to Madsen, Miner, and Jones, we got Robert Carradine (as a professor, lol), Rider Strong (who has an odd tendency to delay his responses to other characters), and the guy who played CJ in Dawn 04, playing, well, another asshole who becomes a hero. Also, there’s a guy in the movie who looks EXACTLY like Richard Tyson, but it’s not him. Which bummed me out.

So there it is; the first of what will probably be another half dozen or so ho-hum and forgettable, if not exactly BAD, group of films, plus one good one (my money's on Mulberry St) and one god awful piece of shit.

What say you?