Cold Fusion Video Reviews

• Directed by Bo Webb
• Written by Angus Houvourus, Eric Tomosunas, and Bo Webb
• Starring
  • D.J. Naylor
  • Big Daddy Kane
  • Brandon Harlin
  • Michelle Mims
  • Dominic L. Santana

You know me. I hate the whole hip-hop “urban” shtick of the past twenty years with its macho posturing and its misanthropic glorification of crime being touted as an expression of a vibrant and authentic subculture, one which we white boys are congenitally disallowed from critiquing. So you know that the only way I could be hooked into watching a hip-hip heist movie is with the promise that, somewhere along the way, there’d be zombie flesh-munching a-plenty.

Though those elements take so long to show up that I was almost ready to throw in the towel. After a teaser opening in which a lost couple gets dragged from their car on a lonely country road and a mysterious black-clad commando follows the clues left behind, we meet our main protagonists, such as they are. First, there’s Jackson (D.J. Naylor), who holds the distinction of being the whitest black guy you will ever see ever. I’m not talking culturally, I mean dermatologically; Jackson makes Vin Diesel look like a Nubian prince at midnight. He’s ex-military, but ever since the end of the jail term that greeted him soon after his return to civilian life, Jackson’s been making ends meet as a small-time bodyguard and general hired muscle for Hustle (rapper E-40), Miami crimelord. Now Jackson’s looking to take a different road and tells Hustle of his intentions to quit, but Hustle feels like he’s owed a little more for all the favors he’s done Jackson, so he signs him up for just one more job.

Meanwhile, the rest of our protagonists are doing their best to show Jackson up as the model citizen of the decent and upwardly mobile, mainly by contrast. Ski (Brandon Hardin) and his buddies are at the extreme downstream of Hustle’s operation, working petty gambling and drugs on the street, and like Jackson, they too yearn to make something better of themselves. In their case, however, they think that this good life off of the street is best accomplished through a major bank robery. I guess the thought of, say, learning a trade never occurred to them. Fortunately, buddy Malcolm’s (Dominic L. Santana) uncle in prison used to be a very successful bank robber (it only takes one booboo to break a winning streak), and has told him all about the one cherry bank he never had time to knock over: A branch in the small town of Maysville, a day north of Miami, which is also a holding depot for several other branches. Should be a cinch for the four of them to waltz in and knock it over, right?

(By the way, if you are not up to speed on the extreme of ebonics, you should thank me for wading through the dialogue and distilling it for you, including the occasional character name that I could only pick out far later in the movie, if at all. There may, I propose, be such a thing as too much authenticity in dialogue, as that delivered in this film is 80% composed of two repeated words which themselves convey no meaning except, of course, the general aura of badassness. You could almost lay down a beat to it: Fugga shitta fugga shitta mudda-fugga shitta-shitta.)

The only thing they need to accomplish their goals is a brain. No, wait, I meant guns. For this they turn to Hustle, who’s happy to oblige with the appropriate artillery, in return for a 10% cut. But when the posse drives to Maysville, they also discover another condition placed by Hustle: Jackson is there waiting, instructed to join the crew to make sure everything goes smoothly.

(So where are the zombies? Hold yer horses, they’re coming.)

Jackson’s plan is eminently sensible: The four of them are to cool their heels in the motel room, while he puts on suburban clothes and heads downtown to check the lay of the land, even open an account at the bank to get a good look inside. Then tomorrow — Friday — they’ll strike right before closing time. (Jackson never actually says that he’s the one who should case the bank because he’s the only one who can “pass” — not just as a white, but as a well-adjusted member of society. But said or unsaid, it’s true.) Despite his Caucasian appearance, he immediatey attracts the attention of the good ol’ boy sheriff, who sets Deputy Kate (Michelle Mims) to keep an eye on him.

He also attracts the attention of a large commando guy when he drops in to browse at the military surplus store — a guy (rapper Big Daddy Kane) we recognize from that pre-credit killing. Instantly feeling a bond because of their common military background, Commando Guy (he’s never given a real name) warns Jackson: Don’t go out after dark. There’ll be things out there. Zombieish-vampirish things. Jackson turns politely on his heel and leaves, because he knows that this is a heist movie, not a horror movie. Right?

Jackson’s next stop is the bank, accompanied by Deputy Kate, who immediately gloms onto him on the sidewalk, and expresses interest perhaps beyond the task given her by the Sheriff. (I guess that if what the Sheriff said was true — that they really don’t see many new faces around Maysville — then the courtin’ prospects among the locals might be a tad low.)

They wander into the bank for Jackson to open a new account, and he’s just sitting at the desk with Rich (dang the IMDb for its incomplete credit list), the branch manager, when…

Well, see, Ski got bored back in the motel, and irritated at the lack of respect. So in their infinite wisdom the four of them decided to go ahead with the robbery a day early and leave Jackson out of it. So in three of them barge (with one sitting behind the window of the getaway car) and start waving guns and demanding money.

Brilliant.

It doesn’t take long before their unplanned overexuberance turns the situation bad, in the form of a dead deputy. (That’s also the time for their getaway driver to decide to rabbit.) The entire half-dozen member of the Sheriff’s Department — minus Deputy Kate, who’s one of the hostages — shows up to ring the front door. Ski frees all of the hostages except Kate, Rich, and Jackson, who’s caught in between wanting to do the job he was sent for right and wanting to dissociate himself from these losers. It looks like it’s going to be a long and desperate standoff…

Until zombies show up and munch the deputies, then start hammering on the glass.

Now, my first thought was, “Doesn’t the Sheriff know they’ve got a local zombie problem? He immediately notices a new resident casually strolling down the sidewalk; how has it escaped his notice that his bailiwick is crawling with the living dead come sundown?” But these questions are answered soon, when Commando Guy mows his way to the front door and Jackson lets him in. Commando Guy is also Exposition Guy, so listen up:

- He was a military guard at a base doing research into artificial blood for soldiers. One such test serum accidently produced the living dead. Oops.
- The zombies are blood-drinking pack hunters that burrow in abandoned buildings or underground and only come out on the night of the new moon. They also consistently move south, which is why they haven’t been a problem up until tonight for the now-zombified Sheriff.
- The smell of the blood from a couple of dead hostages attracted them here.
- They’re killed not by headshots, but by a bullet or blade to the heart, thus tipping them a little more to the vampire side of the continuum. (It also helps save on SFX costs.)

As you may guess, with a standoff going on with zombies outside and various parties at odds with each other inside, we’ve reached the compulsory NotLD sequence. Unlike a lot of zombie flicks, though, this is actually the better part of the movie (and not even because all of the complaints I had about the first part). The people trapped inside all happen to be there together for very good reasons, which also motivate their character conflicts. And when Commando Guy splits them up to start checking and locking all the other possible entrances, it soon becomes apparent that he’s got some hidden motives too — the kind that have him unlocking doors he professes to be locking.

And despite all of my complaints which stem from the subcultural setting, it’s a slick little indie film. The zombie makeup is light but effective, with emphasis on cloudy eyes and the gaping wounds that each received when they themselves were zombie fodder. Editing is tight and energetic.

Acting is a little harder to judge — after all, the whole inner-city machismo complex that informs the behavior of two thirds of the core cast is already fraught with pretense and affectation, so it’s difficult to judge their thespian skills. The two whites of the core cast are less than completely believable, but once the zombies start swarming and the bullets start flying, it’s easier to ignore any lapses there.

There are, of course, still complaints. Some of them stem from cliches: You just know that someone is going to meet a zombified loved one and put his guard down, but does it really have to be the person who knows best the danger of such thinking? Some of them stem from forgotten plot threads: If the Sheriff threatened before sundown that the State Police and FBI were already notified, shouldn’t some of them have shown up by dawn?

And the one detail that rubbed me raw: Rich, the branch manager, is characterized upfront as an evangelical, right down to one of those “books of the Bible” neckties. So of course, he’s played for laughs. Because what’s freshier and more original than automatically poking fun at Christians? Especially when he’s one of the few characters who actually exhibits remorse or other signs of a conscience, in comparison to the (let’s be frank) utterly reprehensible personal ethics of most of the characters we’re supposed to take more seriously.

So. A mixed review, but once we get past the glorification of culturally-specific antisocial tendencies in the first half hour, it gets much better. (The hate mail can begin…. Now.)

Some Notable Totables:

• body count: 11
• breasts: 3
• explosions: 0
• ominous thunderstorms: 0
• actors who’ve appeared on Star Trek: 0