Twin Daggers

Released by: 2020 Films
Availability: Out Now
Price: £9.70

It doesn’t bode especially well when the opening shot of a movie is emblazoned with the description ‘Los Angeles 1930’ and you can clearly see cars and electricity pylons which wouldn’t be around for decades to come. Nor does the first interior shot promise much as the world’s most conspicuous assassins hang out in a library’s reference section that must surely have been marked ‘Glaringly Obvious A-thru-Z‘. The resulting fight sequence may boast some impressive gymnastics, but it’s wrapped up in some cheesy choreography, scenery-chewing dialogue and a confusion over whether the audience is supposed to be taking the antics seriously or not. In many ways, that sums up Twin Daggers, a project that may have looked good on paper, but results in a mismatch of conflicting tones that simply fail to gel.

A famous underworld hitman (surely an oxymoron?) called Scholar (Rhett Giles) is hired by Kay (Coco Su) to kill her twin sister Sue (also played by Su), avenging the death of their parents. Kay also enlists the help of Scholar’s previous team-mates, a duplicitous group of killers played by Veronica Bero, Joey Covington and Vasilios Elovalis. The stage is set for various agendas and much subterfuge as the killers decide their priorities - finish the job they were hired to do or stop each other’s attempts. When Scholar begins to be attracted to Sue, he must also make some decisions about how far he is willing to go…

Though ambitious in ideas, much of the film feels very amateurish - akin to a shoestring, late-night schedule-filler. However it’s clear that some money has been spent on props and sets (even those of questionable authenticity), so clearly the money is not a valid excuse. It’s the performances that really let the side down - some times you can almost see the actors counting their steps as they move into position and there’s an equal lack of conviction in their eyes as the predictable dialogue seeps forth. In one other scene a burglar raids an antique store by leaping unnecessarily over a chair he could have stepped around and then effectively body-pops across the floor like a desperate Britain’s Got Talent contestant and in another Bero slides across a table to fight one of her opponents in a way that the Dukes of Hazard look co-ordinated. And these are just the scenes when the body-doubles are not obvious!

Perhaps the biggest problem here is the film is simply being sold as something it’s not… a huge period-piece martial-artist extravaganza when it effectively has all the mystique and scale of a local am-dram production. Ultimately it’s not so much Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon as Useless Suspects, Hidden Talent. The DVD cover promises some typical hand to hand combat and aggressive confrontations - personified by two actors who DON‘T EVEN APPEAR IN THE FILM… and what we actually get is a film that barely goes through the motions, wastes its period-setting and is tripped up by confusing, amateur editing. On the flip-side this a project, originally released in 2008, positively screaming for a spoof over-dub a la The Flashing Blade. Perhaps a new party game has been born!

4/10
DANIEL K GRAY