David O'ConnellX
November 25th 2011 01:40
Director Jon Hewitt’s follow-up to the excellent genre film Acolytes (2009) is a disappointment of the most crushing kind. A seedy tale of Sydney prostitutes on the run from a murderous, corrupt cop, X is a classic example of heaping gratuitous violence, nudity and other sexual content into a screenplay to distract audiences from its other many glaring imperfections.
From its ludicrous opening scenes, X takes to the gutter, using its unsubtle sound design and score to swallow this generic tale whole. Hanna Mangan-Lawrence, who has otherwise shown promise in films like The Square (2008) and Lucky Country (2009), is barely adequate as Shay, a desperate newcomer to the streets of Sin City. She gets taken under the wing of high-priced call-girl Holly (Viva Bianca), but after a threesome in a hotel room, they slink off into a back room, only to witness their client getting blown away by a deranged cop (Stephen Phillips) who later, in a particularly ludicrous scene, goes all Irreversible on a guy’s head.
Naturally a protracted chase through the viral streets of Sydney's underworld eventuates. Negligible minor characters pop up but there's no real suspense, only Hewitt attempting to feed the degeneracy with women being slapped around and more figures needlessly undressing - all in a doomed attempt to construct the facade of a tough, gritty aesthetic. But the film strangles on its mediocrity, not to mention shooting itself in the foot with some truly awful dialogue.
Some of the sex scenes and lazy perusals of full frontal nudity are laughable for how purposeless they are. Hewitt and his co-screenwriter, wife and actress Belinda McClory, have aimed for titillation above all else. Stylishly relayed it might have been a provocative sideline to the main plot, but with the ‘story’ attributed to X (2011) being so utterly lame and derivative, the result here is something that barely rates as straight-to-dvd standard.
X is now in limited release in Australian cinemas.
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Comment by David O'Connell
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