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D-Tox
Sylvester Stallone stars as an alcoholic FBI agent sent to an isolated rehab clinic in this gory, clapped-out thriller from the director of I Know What You Did Last Summer
It doesn't usually bode well when a movie which has languished on the shelf for three years undergoes four title changes (it's called Eye See You in the States, but has also been known as 'Detox' and 'The Outpost' since its 1999 production), before a tellingly low-key release. Such is the case with D-Tox, directed by Jim Gillespie (I Know What You Did Last Summer) and starring Sylvester Stallone. Predictably, this one's a dog. A riff on John Carpenter's The Thing crossed with David Fincher's Seven, it lacks the tension of both, and has a plot you could steer a snowplough through. This involves Stallone's FBI haunted and hunted FBI agent Jake Malloy. Following the slaying of his colleague and wife by a serial killer, the grief-wracked, alcoholic Malloy is sent to a clinic to a dry out. The cops-only drying-out clinic where the action takes place is located in the wintry wastes of Wyoming (though it was filmed in Vancouver). It's sinister, impressively realised bunker-like construction is hardly conducive to restoring mental health, one would have thought. Here, Malloy's demons come haring back as, one by one, his fellow patients are slain in worryingly familiar fashion. Never the most versatile of actors, Stallone turns in his most somnolent performance to date, his acting range veering from mildly irked to quietly rankled throughout (no mean feat when your screen wife have just been butchered). It would be refreshing, just once, to encounter a serial killer who isn't driven by a righteous morality (just why this one's got it in for Malloy is never properly explained), and one whose catchphrase ("I see you - can you see me?") doesn't sound like a 'Play School' presenter's. But ultimately, it's the lack of a decent script - or even basic research - that really jars. What's "London's Metropolitan Police Department" when it's at home? |
