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Stag Night
USA 2009
produced by Christopher Eberts, Michael Philip, Arnold Rifkin, Chris Ouwinga (executive), Todd Traina (executive), Darryn Welch (executive) for Rifkin-Eberts, Film Tiger, Instinctive Films
directed by Peter A.Dowling
starring Kip Pardue, Vinessa Shaw, Breckin Meyer, Scott Adkins, Karl Geary, Sarah Barrand, Luca Bercovici, Genadii Ganchev, Radoslav Parvanov, Nikolai Sotirov, Itai Diakov, Rachel Oliva, Suzanna Urszuly, Jo Marr, Lubomir Yonchev, Maya Andreevy, Amy Mihailova, Yordan Zahariev, Phil Jackson, Vencislav Stojanov, Dennis Andreev, Gabi Balanica
written by Peter A. Dowling, music by Benedikt Brydern, special effects makeup by Elvis Jones, visual effects by Alex Filipov, Liubomir Savov
review by Mike Haberfelner
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It's Mike's (Kip Pardue) stag night, but aftter his brother Tony
(Breckin Meyer) starts a fight, the two of them and their friends Carl
(Scott Adkins) and Joe (Karl Geary) get thrown out of a stripclub, and
travelling uptown by subway to continue their party elsewhere, they
run into two strippers from the club, Brita (Vinessa Shaw) and Michelle
(Sarah Barrand) - and after Tony gets into a fight with them, they for no
reason at all all get stranded at a long abandoned and sealed off subway
station - and while most of them agree to walk to the next station to get
out, Carl and Michelle stay behind to make out ... but instead of
shagging, they end up being killed by some long-haired guys (Luca
Bercovici, Genadii Ganchev, Radoslav Parvanov). The others witness the
long-haired guys killing someone else elsewhere and soon find themselves
on the run from them, and it's not long before Joe is killed and Tony is
allowed to redeem himself by dying a hero's death saving the others. Mike
and Brita make it to some underground settlement, where they ask for help
- but soon enough they have to realize the natives here are in league with
the long-haired ones, and thus Mike and Brita have to run some more before
they have their showdown with their pursuers, where Brita is allowed to
die a heroine's death (after all she's a stripper and he's engaged to be
married to someone else, so she has to go), while Mike actually manages to
kill the long-haired ones and make it to the next station - but in a very
tired shock ending, he is slaughtered in the very last scene by the kid of
the long-haired ones. The premise of someone being caught in
the underground system of whatever city being chased by a gang of killers
sounds promising on paper - yet the 2004 film Creep
proved that this concept doesn't necessarily translate to the screen too
well. If nothing else, Stag Night from 5 years later proves that it
has learned nothing from the shortcomings of Creep,
though, it's as unimaginative a rip-off of the earlier film as can be. To
be quite honest though, the first half hour or so of Stag Night
isn't too bad, it even contains a few effective and/or gruesome
scenes. Problem is, after this, writer/director Peter A.Dowling seems to
have run flat out of ideas, and instead of at least trying to progress his
story, he treats us to endless scenes of the characters either running
down some tunnels or fighting among one another, and when the protagonists
actually face their adversaries (which actually happens every now and again), these
encounters follow the rules of an action flick rather than a shocker, and
thus the characters mostly engage in fistfights - which are pretty
boringly staged, even. The main problem of the film though might not be
its repetitiveness or its bad action, but the complete blandness of its
characters: A few of them are walking clichés - the good guy who's set to
marry the other day, his loose-cannon brother who's allowed to die a
hero's death, the resolute stripper with a heart of gold who's actually a
college student - while the vast majority of others are nothing, totally
bland, they just
stand around, hang out with the leads, but never even try to win over the
audience - and thus when they're killed, who cares? To sum it up, a bad
film, and definitely not worth your time and money.
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