Truly Dreadful Film

Instant Favorite.

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

Slave is a very morbidly vague movie, and that's what I loved about it, which made it very intriguing, but in the end it's really just a weak film. Some would say trashy film. Two honeymooners travel to Spain, where the father criminal of the groom resides. The first night while living it up in town, the girlfriend disappears. Now begins a frantic search which becomes an obsession to find her. The pacing of mystery here is excellent as we slowly learn she's the first to go missing. She has ended up on a boat, where an guy with a big scary looking beard runs a harem a girls, a sex slavery ring, all it as you will, where he gets em' drugged, and prepped for the clients, one of them we see, is disposed of cheaply. Like I said at the start, this film is morbid, be warned, but it's morbidly intriguing, but b grade fodder too. We do have some beautiful girls and a bit of bare bodied nudity, our lead actress quite gorgeous. Her POV as she weakens from her drugged stupor, as she's goes up deck and meets the other girls is sloppy. The criminal playboy too, proves a shocking revelation near the end of the film where too, the punishing end, on behalf of the boyfriend's fate kind of doesn't make sense, but if you look from the girlfriends point of view, it does. Purely this film is aimed at the undemanding, but too for some, it'll attract the crowd of a higher accepting audience.

Even Though this film would not be classified as a horror movie, people who enjoyed the original video nasties of the 80's might enjoy this too. On one level I was thinking about the Texas chainsaw massacre and how the remake creates leatherface as an anti-hero. What seems to be lacking in many horror remakes is the ability to pick on, and demonize minority groups and a large dose of misogyny. This film manages this. The idea of casting howard marks, is effective as exploitation cinema in the best possible way, it adds an authenticity to any criminal elements that many develop later in the film.I can see a connection with this film and 'taken' but the dialogue is very poor. Saying that the pacing is good, the plot unfolds at exciting pace. it is not bad as a horror/thriller.

Don't be fooled by Slave. This film is all tricked out like it's some kind of extreme sex and torture bonanza. But outside of a montage that looks like a rap music video inspired by Jennifer Connelly's last scene in Requiem for a Dream, Slave is as tame as a whipped dog. There's some topless chicks, some people get shot, a fist fight that makes as much sense as a field mouse taking on a rhino and that's about it. There's actually little sex and not much violence or other generalized depravity in this movie, which means all it has going for it is the intelligence of its script, the skill of its director and the talents of its cast. Try not to be shocked, but it almost goes 0 for 3.David Dunsmore ( Sam Page) and his hot fiancée Georgie (Nassia Malthe) head to Spain to spend some time with David's estranged father, the shady and relentlessly prickish Robert Dunsmore (Michael Maxwell). Once there, Georgie is abducted and taken to a boat owned by a crazy Russian called The White Arab (David Gant) where she's supposed to be turned into some sort of drug-addled sex slave. Meanwhile, David just sort of wanders around with this forlorn look on his face like a little kid who lost his puppy. There's a scene that explains the break up of David's family and then he teams up with a bartender (Roger Pera) whose sister is also on the Arab's boat, a paring that's like Pee Wee Herman joining up with Charles Bronson, and they decide to storm the boat and save the women they love. Meanwhile, Robert decides to stage his own covert rescue, only to wind up beaten to death by his own son when David mistakenly thinks he catches dear old Dad screwing his incoherent fiancée.Let me start with the two things that were good about Slave. Michael Maxwell is fun to watch as the invincibly piggish Robert Dunsmore. He's not only infinitely more charismatic and entertaining than his wuss of a son, but Maxwell is able to perfectly switch gears when Robert has to display some long buried decency. David Gant is also a great bad guy. He looks evil. He sounds evil. He even moves kind of evil. Plop The White Arab down in something that really is a gore and nudity filled exploitation flick and you'd have the makings of a trashy good time.The rest of this motion picture is not good at all. It is rather visually stylish in the way that so many movies are today, particularly a home movie montage at the start that explains the backstory of David's family, but by the time Slave was 20 minutes old I had already had more than enough of all the fancy editing, imagery and sundry bullcrap. Every technique and shot and filmmaking choice is the same thing you see from every filmmaker born after the debut of Miami Vice on NBC.As for the story…yeesh. Nothing about it makes much sense and it doesn't have nearly enough naked female flesh or simulated brutality to disguise that. How do David and the bartender know where the Arab's boat is? Why does the bartender wait around for this pussified American before starting a rescue effort? Why does Robert, when he's found with Georgie on the boat, provoke his son to violence instead of explaining his heroic motives? Why does a tale of white slavery on the high seas have the soul of a bad romantic comedy? Who did Brett Goldstein blow to get his script produced? Your guess is probably better than mine, especially if you haven't seen this mess.With its lack of violence and sex, Slave doesn't even qualify as a bad horror thriller. It's one of those movies where you view it and wonder what the people who made it thought they were doing. I don't know about you, but I had better things to do with my time. Don't repeat my mistake.

No reviews for this yet? There must be a lot of lucky people out there, then. I supposes it's up to me to warn them the general public about another straight to DVD piece of crap. *Cracks knuckles* Okay, sounds like a sexy set-up, doesn't it? A guy takes his pretty fiancée to Spain to meet his gangsta father, but before they can see each other she ends up getting drugged and abducted in a seedy night-club. Then, she is spirited away to a yacht belonging to a perverted Muslim (Why is it never a Jew or a Christian?) where they intend to use her as a sex slave. Her distraught beau can't get any assistance from his criminal papa, so he teams up with a hairy trailer trash bloke who's sister was similarly kidnapped by these traffickers, to storm the boat and recover his gal. However, daddy has a change of heart later on, which leads to complications and tragedy..Okay, now let me stop you right there. Now, looking at the description above, you're probably imagining all manner of seedy goings on, ain't ya? Well sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but what perversions occur in this movie are fragmented at best, and are so laughably depicted you're more likely to be in hysterics rather than getting off to them. Yes, the director actually expects us to give a hill o' beans about this stupid thriller plot, which has been done a hundred times before and a hell of a lot better than here. In the sparse 80 minute running time we see plenty of the main character running around like a loon for 90% of the length, then we get the final bloody climax and BANG it's over. I was so engrossed I almost turned over in my sleep.One of these days they'll make an uncompromising dramatic film where they will possibly go all the way in explaining just what WOULD happen to a pretty white girl if she was captured in another country and forced into prostitution. Until then, we'll have to made do with this fantasy version of fat blokes in colourful shirts and impossibly beautiful models where they combine it with a cheap action movie script and end up with.. not much at all. BORING. Oh and next time, get a cast that can act, will you? 2/10