By Tanya Batson, Staff Reporter AT ROUGHLY 90 minutes, D-Tox is not a very long movie, however by the end of it, you will thank your lucky stars that it was not.
To have made this movie any longer would have been to inflict cruel and far too usual punishment on the public.
To be fair, at the beginning of the flick, D-Tox looked interesting. The writer, Jim Gillepsie, seems to be creating an intriguing and chilling suspense. It is extremely formulaic, but the gritty edge seems to be promising more. Additionally, even if the movie is evidently a copycat, a well-selected psycho can be very interesting.
Unfortunately, this hallucinogen soon wears off, and what you realise you're actually looking at is a movie that was probably made because its creators reasoned that, since it had already been started, they might as well finish it. By the end, it seems to be a case of starting a journey down a lonely country road, which you can tell will probably end badly, but you simply have to shrug your shoulders and plod despiritedly on. D-Tox is a thriller, which does not draw even a single gasp of surprise. In fact, it does not even warrant widened eyes, much less surprise.
D-Tox is about a federal agent, Malloy, who is the investigator in charge of hunting a serial cop-killer. Unfortunately, the police are left chasing their tails as this killer leaves no clues. But as all psychotic killers, at least in Hollywood, are wont, finally, one day, he makes the game a bit more personal and kills Malloy's love interest. This is the point at which the movie seems to be about to get really interesting.
With Malloy being sent to a 'detox' centre for police officers (no, that is not meant to be a joke) the movie seems ready to move away from the formula it has thus far closely followed. However, when it makes the next turn, you are simply left in the wilderness, as apparently, so is the writer. The action, or rather lack there of, is then moved to the back of beyond in the dead of winter. What you had thought was the end of the formula, was actually a switch in formulae.
Unfortunately, the plot seems to have been chucked out the window at this point, and is instead allowed to lurch blindly forward. What they really should have done is forget about the killer and make all the characters freeze to death, which would have created an interesting psycho drama. That would have been far more interesting to watch than this geriatric excuse of a thriller.
The biggest mistake they made was to waste the lead character on Sylvester Stallone. It is a warning to all would-be action heroes. In this movie, Sylvester is definitely the ghost of action-hero past. As he staggers through the emotional scenes, (sometimes not doing too badly) you simply wistfully wish for the glory days of Rambo, when all he had to do was look menacing, growl, run and throw explosives, and yes of course, slash through the bad guys. Ahh the good old days.
Alas these days are long over for our hero, and this character is in bad need of a few dosages of viagra to give it some life.
Robert Patrick, however, who has the relatively small role as Noah, gave a much more interesting performance. He also has the right range, which would have done much better justice to Stallone's character, and gave you something to watch every time. He stole the spotlight.
It is unclear as to why Charles S. Dutton was in this film. Dutton is a more than capable actor and this movie would have benefited if he actually had a useful role, or even well-defined character. Sadly, he did not. While I am very happy to see he has gainful (bad choice of words in light of this movie) employment, Dutton's character, could actually have been left out all together. To be fair, so could most of the cast.
Sean Patrick Flannery, who plays Connor (an officer traumatised by an explosion involving toddlers) was also wasted. For the few moments he was in the flick, it seemed to be about to get interesting. Then once again, there was nothing. He too could have been cut, so badly used is his character. The same can be said for Courtney B. Vance (Jones), who shone a bit of light in the room, which the writer tthen tried very hard to snuff out.
In fact, the talent of the cast was so grossly ignored that, most of them could have been left out. I'm sure D-Tox would not have fared much worse at the box office, if all they had left behind was the snow.
