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[Dead Cert]
Plot:When a group of businessmen make an offer to buy "The Inferno"...a club belonging to a group of tough London gangsters...the gangsters get more than they bargained for, when they learn the businessmen are actually vampires that want their land back. When their demands are not met however, they viciously turn on the gangsters.
Cast:Craig Fairbrass,
Billy Murray,
Dexter Fletcher,
Steven Berkoff.
My Thoughts:A bad stab at the vampire sub-genre.
Review:With vampire movies being all the rage these days, along comes a British effort entitled "Dead Cert". So what sets this one apart from the "Twilight"s of the world? Well for one thing, it's far bloodier, and is your typical adult vampire movie. The film follows a group of British gangsters who enter into a wager with another group of gangsters. The prize? A club which the Brit gangsters own. But what the Brit gangsters don't know is, the other gangsters...are actually vampires.
And in the end, the vampires turn on the Brit gangsters, and take the club by force. Now, the Brit gangsters want it back. But first, they'll need to a little education and help as to "what" they're up against. First off, this movie goes pretty far to be cliche. For example, the vampire gangsters are Romanians, so the myth goes that Romania was the birth place of Dracula, and all of the vampire mythology that goes along with that particular Eastern European country.
But "Dead Cert" as a movie is pretty pedestrian. The film does nothing different from other vampire movies. Nothing to set itself apart, make itself unique, different, or otherwise. It actually allows the viewer to see exactly where things are gonna go, and in a deep way also. By the middle of act 1, you already know how things will end. And it's not very good for a movie to telegraph everything so early. Predictability is a killer to any good horror movie. And when you consider that "Dead Cert" doesn't offer up terrific performances, beyond one-dimensional characters, or a co-herent story, the fact that it's also predictable...is never a good thing.
Sure, it's bloody, gory, and has tons of fangs like any good vampire movie should be. But it takes a more "Bordello Of Blood" route, as opposed to an "Underworld" route. "Underworld" wasn't perfect by any means, but it atleast brought some new blood, no pun intended...to the table with the vampire mythology. It also had some terrific action scenes. This movie delivers none of that. And causes one to lose interest very quickly. In pretty much everything. The characters are unrelateable, boring, and not very much fun to watch either. You can't really root for any of these people.
And the writer fails to make the viewing audience turn with the tide. Using wrestling as an example, any good writer for a wrestling promotion knows how to craft a story where two heel wrestlers won't be equally hated. And instead, one will be looked upon as the hard-edged guy by the fans. Thus, he will get the majority of cheers from the fans, even if he is a quote unquote "heel". In this movie, the heels, the British gangsters, and the Romanian vampire gangsters, are both easy to hate. But the writer fails to give us a reason to side with either group. I mean a reason beyond one group being human, and the other being bloodthirsty demons.
Which is supposed to be the bread and butter of a film like this. To make the viewer, who at one time may have disliked the British gangsters...side with them eventually as they do battle with the Romanian vampire gangsters. Instead, the characters on both sides are so under-developed, boring, uninteresting, and unappealing...that you really fall into a habit of not caring who wins. And in some cases, hoping both sides cancel each other out. In a movie about vampires versus humans, I as a viewer should never feel this way.
Because it basically means that one side isn't being built up enough as the good side, or the devil you know, as opposed to the devil you don't know. "Dead Cert" is also hurt by it's lack of creativity and imagination. The film offers up a character, an old man for example...who warns the British gangstrs in this cryptic, rambling fashion...that the Romanian gangsters are being led by al alpha vampire named Wolf. Now how many vampire movies have you seen where some crazy old person is warning people of the danger posed by vampires?
Or if he isn't crazy, he's old in general. On the list of predictable and expected characters in a vampire movie, it's definitely the old vampire hunter/enthusiast...who knows vampires inside and out. And is always warning of the threat they pose. And per usual, no one listens to him until it's too late. "Dead Cert" does nothing different with this character, and it ends up being just another thing that hurts the film.
As does the ending, which is just a total mess...and looks like a euro-trash steel cage match. Instead of an epic battle of human versus monster. "Dead Cert" is a perfect example of why the vampire genre needs to be shelved for awhile, so more original material can be put together for future vampire movies.
Positives:The directing is decent and edgy in many areas.
Negatives:One-dimensional characters who are also quite boring. The overall story is full of cliches, rehashes, and other annoying vampire movie regulars. The ending is a disaster.
Overall:One star out of four.
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