Fantastic Fest 2011: CALIBRE 9 Review

Calibre 9 is a strange mix of the gleeful exploitation of Jason Eisener's recent Hobo with a Shotgun, the balls out gunplay of Shoot 'Em Up, and the bizarre supernatural undertones of Angel Heart.  The experience is a very tricky one to describe. The story centers around a city manager in a corrupt regime who comes into contact with a gun possessed by the soul of a dead prostitute. Together, they leave a river of dirty blood in their wake as they become the "real rain" that Travis Bickle dreamed of in Taxi Driver, washing away the scum from the streets.

We open on Sarah, the aforementioned prostitute, taking her final breaths on the dirty floor of the roach motel she calls home.  She is bloodied and beaten, and a flashback shows us how she got that way in an Enter the Void styled visual haze.  The colors are lurid and the photography very fluid.  Most of this sequence is a bit hard to make out, as the cinematography attempts to create the seedy atmosphere of the brothel visually with slow shutter speeds on the camera, and bleeding ambient light.  However, by the end, we get the gist.  Sarah is dead at the hands of her pimp. The police are on the scene investigating the umpteenth dead hooker they've seen that week.  Then, the "I'm too old for this shit" retiring cop pulls a 9mm from her abdomen.

What?

The film jumps from there to the apartment of Yaan, the city manager who organizes, plans, and covers up all of the city's dirty laundry.  This scene absolutely reeks of Mary Harron's American Psycho.  Everything from the internal monologue, to Yaan on his treadmill, Yaan plucking nose hairs, and Yaan getting dressed are pulled almost directly from the earlier film.  We are clued in on his position in the city, and what he is expected to do for his boss to keep the Euros flowing.  At this point in the film, I was starting to lose interest. The constant referencing of other material was growing tiresome, and I was kind of regretting my choice.  This malaise on my part lasted a good forty minutes.  Then, we get to the action.

Yaan is directed by his boss to deliver some ill-gotten building permits to a dirty developer on a building site. However, the developer finds that the permits are not as he'd expected and tells Yaan in no uncertain terms that he expects it solved yesterday. Just then, Yaan hears a voice beckoning him from his briefcase, where he finds Sarah, in gun form, telling him that it's time to stand up.  Sarah leaps from his briefcase into his hand and directs him, Evil Dead 2 possessed hand style, in a massacre of the developer's bodyguards and mercenaries. From here on out, it is blood, guts, and bullets for the next forty minutes.

Sarah leads Yaan through the underworld, together they execute everyone in their way.  At this point, it really isn't clear why Sarah has chosen Yaan, or what she has against the general scum of the city.  To be honest, those two mysteries are pretty much left unanswered, and it is one of the major flaws of the film. Characters pop in and out of the narrative, conveniently filling plot holes, and providing some exposition. The subsequent action leaves little time for reflection on the part of the audience, as we are given very little time to breathe while the two blast their way through the increasing more disgusting ranks of the local hierarchy. There are buckets of blood on display, and most of the blood is practical, which is a bonus.

The action is the major draw in Calibre 9, and it is pretty intense.  The film is stylishly shot, if a bit derivative of better known works.  I found myself frequently thinking, "okay, that shot came from this movie, and this idea came from that movie", but if you can turn that voice off in your brain, it is a doozy of a flick.  The film shuffles along at a pretty slow pace for the first half, but once it picked up I really enjoyed it.  I think that if the director had committed to the exploitation style earlier on in the narrative, the film would have flowed much better, but it seems to take itself a bit too seriously for just long enough to slow the proceedings down significantly enough to dull my enthusiasm. Calibre 9 is not my favorite film of the fest, but it is a smaller action film worth checking out.