Writer: Tad Daggerhart
Director: Todor Chapkanov
There is a lot of back story in Todor Chapkanov’s crime thriller Black Lotus written by Tad Daggerhart, a pre-amble about a terrorist attack on an opera company (very Tenet), the losses suffered by a Special Forces team sent in to stop them, a mopey protagonist, Matteo, with experience serving in Afghanistan and a guilt complex that plays out with the family of his dead colleague and pal. For an action film lasting only 90-minutes, more than 30 of them are given over to the establishment of all this emotional baggage before the real story gets going so you might be forgiven for being unclear exactly what Black Lotus is meant to be about.
There is definitely a crypto-currency angle, some missing money owed to a very dodgy dealer, Saban whose banker, Paul, now happens to be married to the widow of the protagonist’s friend. There are some heavies to threaten the good people of the film. Interpol are watching their every move but while our guy Matteo jogs mournfully, goes to the funfair with his niece and begins some carpentry, we know he will just have to get involved. Will he save everyone? Probably but not until the action sequences finally kick in.
Daggerhart tells a very drawn-out story while Chapkanov is so bored by his own plot he gets distracted by the beauty of his lead actor instead, inserting at least two ‘Diet Coke break’ style sequences that showcase his sweaty physique as he does manual work even though they have absolutely no relevance to the plot at all. With only 90-minutes to tell a story, this seems like a strange digression and despite the high stakes opener and a new corpse appearing unexpectedly after 40-minutes, progress is slow and the plot meanders more than the Amsterdam canals that feature in the background of Black Lotus.
Thriller might be pushing it as a description, thrills are sparse at best as Matteo spends more than half the time melting his already broken heart by connecting with his adorable goddaughter and child of his dead friend. When the big plot point occurs 50-minutes in, we finally get some aggressive cycling, and the excitement is almost unbearable. Fortunately, Chapkanov is overwhelmed by the excitement too and cuts into this with yet another romanticised flashback between Matteo and his friend years before as they motivate each other with tales of how noble they were and pat each other on the back.
The plot is so ludicrous that the actors just don’t know what to do with themselves. No one tries very hard, half the time they all so sedate it is hard to believe any of it matters, the rest of time they overact terribly delivering Daggerhart’s cliched dialogue with soap opera exaggeration. Starring Rico Verhoeven as Matteo, Frank Grillo as Saban and Peter Franzén as Paul, Black Lotus promises a lot and everyone talks a good game about how tough they are and how their revenge will play out but in the end with barely 15-minutes of accumulated action sequences, it delivers very little.
Black Lotus will be available on Digital Download from 19th June.
