Netflix A-Z: X (2011)

You don’t even want to know how hard it is to find a movie starting with X. So, I went with the most basic one.  X has a compelling poster, at the very least.  I didn’t know anything about it.  This is about as random as they get.  X does have a lot of nudity with the content its handling so if that’s not your sort of thing, then please refrain.

Let’s go!

X: The Night of Vengeance (2011)

Director: Jon Hewitt

Cast: Viva Bianca, Hanna Mangan Lawrence, Stephen Williams, Eamon Farren, Belinda McClory, Freya Tingley

A jaded call-girl. A fledgling hooker. The night from hell.-IMDB

Okay, where to start with this one? X starts off with Holly (the call girl) who wants to retire to Paris secretly and lead a new life. She has one more day of this call girl thing where she starts the day doing a little sex act for some classy rich ladies and then meets up with one of her most committed clients (who wants to take her away and leave his family) and ends with a threesome. Parallel to her story, in the evening a 17 year old Shay runs away from home and ends up selling her hand job skills (or more) for money when she ends up in Sydney (I think).  As she ventures in this new city and tries to just make money on the go, it turns out to be a hard time falling in a lot of bad situations until she ends up getting in on part of Holly’s threesome in a very random situation. That’s when they cross paths and soon after, end up running for their lives.

Feeling the thrills yet? I didn’t.  I didn’t really hate the movie.  It wasn’t bad but I didn’t care much for the characters either.  There was a lot of nudity and sex and I don’t even mind that much.  I mean, I did do like one or two posts called 3some reviews last year.  This is really supposed to be right up my alley.  Except, painting a tense night with strangers is hard. The characters didn’t really have much development, and the story was so predictable.  You can see the twist coming a hundred miles away.  And that villain was goofy. He’d go “gotcha” every time and you know they are going to find a way to escape…again.

But, this one did have some redeeming qualities.  I mean, I really liked the guy here.  He had like 10 minutes in the entire movie and somehow became an influencing factor to Shay.  The character is played by an Eamon Farren who looks incredibly familiar but I don’t think I’ve seen anything with him.  He was a decent character if only they built on him a little. Forcing a thriller out of corrupted cops doesn’t really do it all the time. Aside from that, there was Freya Tingley who was also a minor character that had even less screen time and she was in the Netflix series Hemlock Grove int he first season and I really like her quite a bit too. That’s not saying that the two leads aren’t good.  They did well with what they had, except the story was just really formulaic.  Plus, the thrillers that don’t work is when you don’t really care if your leads get away or not. Its not for a lack of trying too.  We had one or two scenes where we dive a little deeper in the characters of Shay and Holly but nothing ever big enough that latches on.

Overall, it does sound like I disliked this movie.  Point is, I’m pretty indifferent and yet something made me want to watch it again so I did.  I didn’t feel anymore but other than good supporting characters and decent leading ladies, the setting isn’t bad and some atmosphere’s are captured really well.  In the whole erotic scenes here (and there was a few), it worked pretty good.  In the end, its really the script and the dialogue that doesn’t add up.  Its predictable and not really enough thrills.  I’m not exactly sure if the villain was meant to be funny in the sense that he reacts in a certain way and he just hates on women particularly so much.  Some things in the story just didn’t add up and I guess that is what frustrates me because I can see this being a much better movie and yet, it didn’t quite work for me. I’m pretty sure I’ll forget about it in a few days.  I mean, I already had to go back and check the names when writing this up.  I guess that says something, right?

Have you seen X? Do you like erotic/crime thrillers (not sure where it categorizes itself)?