Cat Run (2011)

hyped garbage

Best movie of this year hands down!

Very interesting film. Was caught on the premise when seeing the trailer but unsure as to what the outcome would be for the showing. As it turns out, it was a very good film.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

I've just finished watching 'Cat Run' and I figured I better get my thoughts down before I totally forget what I wanted to say. I'll begin by mentioning that I'm quite happy to watch 'bad' films. By that I mean 'so-bad-they're-good' films. I wasn't expecting much from a film called 'Cat Run.' I read the blurb – working girl witnesses murder, needs protection, baddies give chase. Yeah, that'll do me for an hour and a half of my time.I started watching it. My first thought was, 'Is this film dubbed?' The voices didn't seem to match up with the actors' mouths and I wondered whether I was watching a foreign film (it is set mainly in continental Europe) dubbed into English. But I wasn't. I overlooked the odd lip-syncing and continued. Sure enough, a high class escort witness a multiple murder and comes away with a hard disk containing data the baddies are after. Cue the chase.The escort runs hither and thither, generally looking pretty attractive and little else. Then we meet our other heroes. A pair of young men who set up a detective agency help to find her. I have to say they didn't appeal to me. The main character I found 'wet' and uninteresting and his friend might as well have been called 'cliched best friend #298.' I have to say by this time I was tuning out – checking my emails on my phone and stuff. It was all pretty dull. I may even have turned it off there and then had it not been for one thing...Helen Bingham. If you don't know her (and I must confess that I don't), she's a British actress who must be around middle age (think Helen Mirren, only about twenty years ago). Anyway, she's hired as an assassin (yes, a middle age woman with cut-glass English accent is a bad-ass assassin – go with it) to bring in the escort and anyone who aids and abets her. In short – Helen Bingham rocks. She totally steals every scene and makes the film watchable. The heroes pale in comparison compared to her. She was so good that I had a horrible feeling that she was only going to be in it for a few scenes and I'd end up watching the rest of the film in the hope that she returns. I'm glad to say she's in it the whole way through. And the film is all the better for it.I won't go into too much detail about what follows, only that if you feel like watching a sort of B-movie version of a Guy Ritchie/spy thriller chase movie (yes, it crosses genres quite broadly – there's even a lot of black comedy thrown in there for good measure), then this one is worth it simply for Helen Bingham's performance.

Whoa, this is a hard movie to review. It is filled with action, odd characters, and quite a bit of realistic and gruesome violence. Most guys are going to be drawn in right in at the beginning when confronted with an entire roomful of unbelievably beautiful, totally nude, Eastern European prostitutes. The visuals of all kinds never really let up in this movie, especially since it was filmed in interesting areas of Europe. The lead female assassin (incidentally, a much older and more matronly woman than the eye candy on the cover) is downright terrifying (one could even say castrating with respect to men) in her utter ruthlessness and efficiency. Take the warning seriously about there being some pretty graphic violence in this film, because I'm not ridiculously squeamish, yet I found myself pretty shocked. Most of the action actually seems fairly realistic, at least until the very end, at which point the filmmakers, as is common, get carried away with some physically unlikely or downright impossible stuff. My attention never flagged during this movie, since it struck me as being so far out of left field that I wasn't sure what to make of it. If this kind of film experience became more common, I'm sure that I wouldn't rate this as highly, but it's current uniqueness, at least for me personally, gets it full marks.

Despite always feeling that an IMDb rating over 6 is a worthy movie, this one is on the verge of a lower rating.It is hard to put your finger on the exact reason this movie is so silly, others have said the plot is weak (I suggest haphazard is a better word), certainly the acting is mediocre, the humour was there but lame at times, the two "buddies" are just too goofy to take serious as private eye's, but the handicapped African-Scottish assistant (D.L. Hughley) may have been the silliest. A final criticism is that some of the scenes made no sense, no wonder this didn't get an Oscar for editing.But, and I always at least try to give some positive comments, it was relatively entertaining and worth a watch on a stormy Sunday afternoon in February if you have nothing else to do. Lets be honest (guys), Paz is enjoyable to see in action and the two assassins were "interesting" (Janet McTeer) and oddly funny (Tony Curran).

11 years ago, director John Stockwell impressed me very much with the film Crazy/Beautiful, but his following movies were very far from reaching that level, such as Cat Run, which I consider (with the exception of the deplorable Into the Blue) his worst film so far. This is a pity, because I think that Stockwell is a solid director who (with the exception of Crazy/Beautiful) hasn't found a project which fully exploits his talent; and after having watched Cat Run, it's evident that the same thing keeps happening.Cat Run pretended to emulate the style made popular by director Guy Ritchie in the films Snatch and Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. Stockwell employed the well-known techniques of quick edition, freeze frame, split screen and animated transitions. However, those tricks feel false, like if Stockwell forcedly introduced them after the shooting, contradicting the general tone from the narrative. Having said that, I understand why he did that...the screenplay lacks of any flow or excitement, and its lazy structure takes us from one scene to another without any enthusiasm or energy. However, the stylish aspects Stockwell added to the film didn't avoid it from being boring, mainly because of the screenplay.Paz Vega is a talented actress, but the character she plays is totally flat and passive. She isn't even a "damsel in danger"; she's just the screenplay's "mcguffin"...that thing which generates conflict because everyone wants to find it. The villains are forgettable clichés; and the duet of North American "heroes" are hateful because of how poorly written they are and the atrocious performances from Scott Mechlowicz and Alphonso McAuley in those roles.Even though Cat Run was a tedious experience, it has one element I liked very much...Janet McTeer's performance. I guess Helen Mirren rejected to play the character of the British efficient killer, and McTeer took advantage of the opportunity in order to bring a brilliant performance. In spite of that, I didn't like Cat Run, mainly because of the bad screenplay and its abundance of irritating characters.