“Fatal Deviation”
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Jimmy Bennett returns to his hometown after 10 years in reform school. With the help of a Celtic Monk and a local beauty, he determines to find out who murdered his father.
This was billed as Ireland’s first martial arts film. It was intended as an homage to martial arts greats like Bruce Lee and Jean Claude Van Damme. I could deal with the low production value, the inane dialogue, plot holes, and stiff acting. I could almost deal with Jimmy’s character trait of solving every confrontation, whether he was involved or not, with showing off his martial arts skills (which are truly substantial) rather than speech. What I couldn’t deal with was the monotony. The effort put into the film was obvious, but it just didn’t get the job done.
The flashbacks to Jimmy’s childhood were mostly well placed and even without dialogue (which I think was a good thing), managed to fill in the back story, even as it created one of the most annoying plot holes. The major plot of the story was who killed Jimmy’s father, but during the flashbacks, we see that Jimmy witnessed his father’s murder (no, the guy wasn’t wearing a mask), yet the identity of the murderer is unknown (yes, he meets the man several times during the film). The characters were stereotypical and I found myself drawing parallels between them and characters from other films. At that point, I was thinking about other movies rather than paying attention to this one.
Maybe it’s partly due to the fact that this isn’t my genre preference, but I have to leave this to the drips and dregs at the bottom of the cup. It’s not the worst movie I’ve ever seen and there might be something redeeming in it, really, but I didn’t find it.
