Director
Jack Ersgard
Cast
Matthew Settle James Hayson
Fay Masterson Monica Klein
Currie Graham Crispin Klein
Patrick Ersgard Andy Fell
Jay Acovone Capt. Peters
DVD Release Date: April 17, 2007
Rating: R
Running Time: 102 Minutes
The Movie
James Hayson was at the end of his rope. He was in debt up to his eyeballs, alone, and just had no direction in life. He was working for a telemarketing company that had seen him quit and come crawling back on many occasions. When James got home there were always messages waiting for him on his machine. But they were only from bill collectors so they went straight to “delete.” His high school reunion was coming up and there’s no reason for him to go, but it will get him out of the house for a night.
The night of the reunion James meets eyes with his former love, Monica, who also happens to be married to his arch-rival Crispin Klein. And oh yes, the reunion is being held at Crispin’s huge mansion too. Nothing is making James’ night any better, so it ends in yet another moment of disappointment and despair.
Over the next few days though, James’ life will be turned upside-down. Monica comes back into his life because she still loves him and wants to get away from the black eyes her abusive husband gives to her. But she knows that no matter what, she cannot leave him because Crispin won’t let her. They can’t run because Crispin will find them. The only answer is for James to take matters into his own hands and kill Crispin while Monica provides a worthy alibi.
But a few slip-ups, a couple dirty cops, and all the resources that Crispin has causes the wrong people to get killed and fingers pointed at anyone in the way. But the police only have one suspect on their mind and that is the owner of the car sitting outside the Klein mansion after Monica, not Crispin, ends up dead. And that car belongs to James Hayson. James is on the run and must use whatever he can and whomever he can to prove his innocence.
Rancid is your basic murder-mystery where the cops have a dead body and all the evidence points to the innocent person. That is it in a nutshell. James and Monica are trying to be together and they figure killing Crispin is the only way. But when Monica ends up dead, everyone is coming after James, of course. It never quite gets confusing, but I think it is a requirement for three-fourth’s of the people in this film to end up dead. Seriously, once we hit the halfway mark of the film, there are people dying left and right in every other scene.
The twists are extremely predictable because they don’t want you to find out until the climatic ending, but you’ll know. Filmmakers didn’t hide the clues well at all and just leave the mystery out in the open. It’s quite frustrating because the film starts off with the police searching the Klein mansion, but you don’t see who is dead. James is hiding in the air shaft and ends up getting away. Then it rewinds to “three weeks earlier.” This is followed by very slow-paced nothingness. Jump forward again to present time and the chase of James by the cops is on. Back again to three weeks earlier, then to present, then to three weeks and then the two time periods miraculously meet up somehow. Again, it’s not confusing; just stupid.
Topping off the whole thing is that there are at least twenty minutes combined of aerial footage of the city. I’m not lying here. It happens between every scene change or after each conversation, and sometimes even opens and closes a scene. It was almost as if they wanted the film to be longer then eighty minutes so they rented a helicopter and shot a bunch of overhead shots. Rancid really didn’t need anything else aggravating me while I watched it, but they simply thought they’d throw it in repeatedly.
The Video
The film is shown in 16:9 Widescreen format and looks alright. Pretty much 90% of the film takes place at night, so just expect a lot of dark scenes and nighttime sky. There is a weird greenish hue on everything at times though which gets really annoying. It’s extremely evident in the opening scenes where everyone’s face is green and they all look nauseous.
The Audio
The film is heard in 2.0 Dolby Digital sound and is so-so at best. There are a lot of times where the dialogue is very hard to hear and no matter how much you turn up the volume, everything still sounds muffled. I do enjoy how everyone in the film (rich or poor) not only has the same doorbell chime and it is one of the oddest sounding chimes ever.
Special Features
Trailers – Crooked, Death Of A President, The Rival, and New Police Story
The Inside Pulse
Another low budget film that you can obviously tell had a low budget. There are only two main locations in the entire film and it gets old really fast. An interesting story, but it isn’t anything that you can’t get from millions of other films and done so much better. The lack of special features is even more of a reason to just avoid this one all together. If you like overhead city shots though, then you have found your film my friend.
