Review: Hell's Gate (2007)
Darren Provine
things in particular: giving a real sense of the characters in brief
introductions, and often telling a good story with only 3 or 4 speaking
parts. I've seen movies which have two hours, and yet I don't feel I
know the characters very well. I've seen movies with a dozen major
roles and yet only half a story.
So I was very pleased to see "Hell's Gate", which had only four
significant speaking roles, and which starts out as one guy's troubles
pushing him into doing something bad -- only to turn into a puzzle.
Something is obviously not right. But what? And how do they protect
themselves from whatever their employer is hiding, without knowing what
it is?
The kidnappers have obviously never committed this sort of crime
before, which makes sense. But it would also appear that they've not
really thought it out very carefully, or ever seen a crime movie once
in their entire lives, which makes less sense.
One of the two main criminals seems like a stereotype from a dozen other
movies, but the other looks believably like someone who's out of his
element. He's not particularly tough, he just did a bad thing and went
to jail for it. He survived prison, but doesn't seem to want to be the
guy his life as an ex-con calls for. He goes along reluctantly; this is
not who he wants to be. He wants to be a nice guy, but he can't. They
could have filled that in a bit more, but I saw it just fine the way it
was.
The guy who hired them -- and whose name is never revealed -- also
seems a bit out of his element. He knows he's smart, because he tells
himself that every day, and he tells lies about how tough he is to
impress the others, but his planning for the crime is superficial, and
his botches betray to his employees that at least some of what he's
told them isn't true.
Their realisation that they've been lied to, and ours, is what makes the
puzzle. The ending wraps up the details -- though I think Mr Nobody gives
up his information too easily, it does finish off the events in this
story without telling us what's going to happen next. Though there is
one unaddressed point I'll mention in the spoiler section.
The movie is a little slow getting started, and it hops around in time
too much for no obvious purpose. But those are quibbles; this was an
interesting story with some interesting characters. At the end, I was
thinking that it reminded me of a stage play -- which, as it turns out,
it originally was.
The movie is not rated. Were it rated, it would almost certainly be
"R", for language and violence.
[ spoilers ]
One of the characters has left his fingerprints all over a crime
scene, having been in and out for more than a week, and yet leaves
without so much as taking anything with him or wiping anything down.
Isn't he going to be connected to the crime in relatively short order?
Shouldn't he be worried about that?