With a title for a film so “in your face” as We Will Not Die Tonight, one would expect to see gruesome carnage and balls-to-the-wall style action. However, Richard Somes’ new thriller is a bland unexciting addition to genre filmmaking.
Reuniting with Erich Gonzales, who plays Kray, a stuntwoman brought back by her former gang for one last job, WWNDT uses its dark, dingy and grimy setting as an effective backdrop to compliment the underworld that Kray and her colleagues must survive from.
Once the job goes wrong (in fact, they refuse to do the job in the first place after a face-to-face meeting with the person responsible), the film turns into a cat and mouse chase, filled with loads of machete wielding and endless baddies to defeat.
Though there are beautifully composed shots, the action set pieces and fight choreography is just like the film’s editing, rough, confusing, and messy. Since the film is so dark, because it takes place over the course of one night, it’s hard to follow the action, and even figure out who is fighting.
Somes’ intention here is to make Kray and her gang’s desperation throughout the night seem as realistic as possible, but the fight sequences leave the audience uninterested; save for one instance where Kray fights off three nameless threatening bad guys with sharp/blunt objects. The editing cuts in the middle of the action and disorients the viewer, blood and gore can’t be seen, it’s very boring to sit through when this occurs numerous times in the film.
- Release Date: 6/29/2018
