• Produced and directed by David Lee Stewart
• Written by Eric Thornett and David Lee Stewart
• Starring
  • David Lee Stewart
  • Bette Cassatt
  • Demetrius Parker
  • Eric Thornett
  • Mitch Toney

I will tell you up front: The video cinematography is cheap, the actors aren’t ready for prime time, and the special effects range from unconvincing to even less convincing. If you demand that your movies be polished and well-moneyed, you will not like Confinement. If, on the other hand, you appreciate homemade movies by a couple of guys with a damned good instinct for entertainment (and who can stage kung-fu fights like a house on fire), you’ve come to the right place. Francis Ford Coppola once famously stated that film would be a legitimate art form the day that some junior-high student could pick up a videocamera and make a for-real movie in her own backyard. We haven’t quite achieved that yet, but David Stewart and his co-conspirator Eric Thornett aren’t going to wait for anyone else to get there first.

You might be forgiven the erroneous assumption that Confinement is a follow-up to Stewart’s earlier movie, Concealment (2001). It’s not; Stewart just likes titles with that certain je ne sais quois. Coming soon: Congealment, about a blood-born bioterror agent; Contentment, about finding peace through meditation and cable TV; and of course, Confusement, a feature-length surrealist tableau. (In all seriousness, Stewart’s next movie, slated for release next year, already has a title: Containment.) But this feature does fit in with Stewart’s previous one, both in production values and in revisited themes. And it’s almost impossible to separate Stewart’s films, with heavy collaboration from Thornett, and Thornett’s own films, made with heavy collaboration from Stewart (who even starred in Thornett’s 23 Hours (2000)). Between Concealment, Confinement, 23 Hours, and Shockheaded (2004), there are plenty of interrelated motifs and revisited themes, and seeing the others makes each movie richer. (Why am I leaving out Stewart’s Return of the Cheyenne Kid (2002)? Because everyone’s allowed a one-off, that’s why.) The trade-off is that some persistent weaknesses are revisited, too.

The test footage for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon Part 2 didn’t come out as well as the studio had hoped…

Confinement is another in a familiar line of Most Dangerous Game variations. Stewart stars as an everyman named Peter, a sporting goods salesman whose formerly active lifestyle is going a little fleshy. One winter’s night he lies down to sleep… and awakens alone in a green forest glade, dressed in a powder-blue uniform.

(An aside: What I just told you about Peter’s background is information gleaned from the next hour of the movie. And that’s as it should be — no character should be introduced on-screen with a curriculum vitae — except for one fact: HIS NAME. It’s a good twenty minutes before we hear it. And the same holds true for other characters; only one meeting includes actual introductions, and the rest of the time we have to listen close to catch their names. I understand exactly how this happens: The character names are all over the script, after all, both in description and in dialogue headers, and it’s easy to overlook the fact that none of those names are ever said out loud on screen. But it’s still damned annoying.)

From my mention of other characters, you can tell that Peter doesn’t stay alone for long. After a night spent in the woods, Peter runs into a young woman in identical dress who’s already been there for several days. The fact that she’s from Utah leaves him uncertain as to where he is now — he had assumed himself to be in Virginia, where he started out, but… He starts to get an inkling of the situation when she catches a bullet with her forehead. It was no random shot; Peter runs and finds himself pursued by hunters. He’s been picked up, kidnapped and dumped here as prey.

There may not be many people who say “Wooo!” when Eric Thornett appears on screen, but I’m proud to be one of them.

The situation fleshes itself out. A pulsing energy barrier marks the boundary of the wooded “confinement” area. There are isolated drop points of food, but such make easy bait for waiting hunters. And there are several other “targets” trapped in the woods. Some expire almost immediately; others quickly develop survival skills, both good and bad; Peter thinks he’s found an ally in Derek (Demetrius Parker), who’s discovered a deep cave unknown to the hunters, but Derek has also been surviving away from the food drops by the simple expedient of cannibalism.

Eventually Peter does find another person with whom he can team up (rescues her from Derek, in fact): China (Bette Cassatt), a skinny fellow Virginian who’s got enough guts to fight back. Despite being an average-seeming everyman, Peter looks like he’s got enough backbone and survival instinct to be a serious contender for the hunters.

Which means that it’s time to bring Eric Thornett on the scene! Thornett plays a no-name character (intentionally, according to the credits), a customer of heartless old man Mr. Wystand (Dudley Sauve) and his chief hunting guide Karl (Mitch Toney). He’s also the flamboyant fu-fighting antagonist we’ve come to expect from him in such movies as Lethal Force, 23 Hours, and Shockheaded. I have no idea how Thornett measures up as a straight actor; his roles (often written by himself) are usually so stylized and over-the-top that it’s hard to gauge how he’d handle “normal” dialogue and situations. But he’s a helluva captivating performer, slinking around with dyed lizardskin clothes and precision-positioned sunglasses. And he’s a double-helluva fu fighter.

“Maybe if I feed it this stick…”

Which, really, is the point of a movie like this: Action and chase scenes. No one’s expecting a new and bold take on The Most Dangerous Game, and that’s fine. I’ve always been amazed at the energy and complexity of the combat scenes in anything Thornett choreographs, because it looks as good as anything from the height of the direct-to-video action movie boom of the late ’80s and ’90s. (It may not seem like a compliment to compare these guys to the likes of Michael Dudikoff and Don “The Dragon” Wilson, but trust me, it is.) Stewart and Thornett together have something of the same vibe as Bruce Willis and Alan Rickman in Die Hard (1988) — the tough but unpolished everyman versus the slick and skilled specialist. It’s made more engaging by the fact that Stewart especially get the crap kicked out of him for his art; there are no stunt doubles or safety nets here.

I don’t mean to give the impression that the movie is an unqualified success. Far from it. As mentioned, the budget curtails the upper limit of visual impact; the video looks like video. The digital effects alternate between surprisingly believable (thrown knives, and a scene full of replicated children) to utterly unconvincing (the energy barrier, the Harrier-like shuttle-choppers, and the occasional explosion or laserbolt effect). On the other hand, the FX deficiencies aren’t so much an impediment if one assumes that they were meant to be indicative or illustrative, rather than photorealistic. No one expects the backdrop or stage props in a stage play to convince with their verisimilitude; by the same token, the digital stopgap effects here fill in necessary background details for the main narrative to run smoothly.

Next on Fox: When SuperNintendo Graphics Attack!

Story problems prove more problematic. As with any everyman character, Peter comes perilously close to being almost featurelessly generic. Details such as his having been a fighter years before are included more to justify his ability to beat off the armed hunters than as part of his characterization. The trauma of being kidnapped and dumped into an arboreal arena is muted by our lack of appreciation for the life from which he’s just been yanked, and to which he presumably wishes to return.

And then there’s the dialogue. While comparatively few scenes are required to carry their weight by conversation, the script manages to be such that its flaws amplify, rather than compensate for, the flaws in the performances. As usual, Thornett’s nameless hunter gets off most unscathed, as he’s meant to be overblown and unrealistic; whereas Peter the everyman, the identification character for everything normal and everyday, bears the brunt of the script’s awkwardness.

“Your shoe’s untied.”
“No it isn’t. Shut up.”

But flaws be damned. Even in the most stilted scenes, even behind the least convincing FX, there’s a sincerity to the filmmaking that overwhelms even the sensibilities of a crotchety hatchetman critic such as myself. One can see that the enthusiasm with which Stewart throws himself into Thornett’s punches in front of the camera is merely a carryover from the energy he demonstrates behind the camera. These guys love to make movies, and that love elevates the result beyond the budget and other resources. The credits are full of Stewart’s extended family (and that of Mitch Toney, aka “Karl” — apparently Thornett comes from a long line of orphans). It’s that kind of collective devotion to the finished entertainment product that results in a no-budget feature that I enjoyed wholeheartedly, and you will too. And if you don’t, it’s your own damned fault; you should.

Some Notable Totables:

• body count: 34
• breasts: 0
• explosions: 9
• dream sequences: 1
• ominous thunderstorms: 0
• actors who’ve appeared on Star Trek: 0