The Victim 2011 - REVIEW

Michael Biehn in his directorial debut with an action/suspense movie packed with twists, turns and alot of nudity.  A movie that was put together rather quickly.  The script was written in just 3 weeks while the filming only lasted all of 11 days.  Pretty impressive for it being Biehn's first movie and all.  A rushed movie is usually not a good thing but in this case it did not hurt in the least.

Mary (Danielle Harris) is having sex with Harrison (Ryan Honey) and is seemingly enthused about it.  When she gets a little smart with him he gets a little rough with her and accidentally breaks her neck.  This sends Mary's friend Annie (Jennifer Blanc) running through the woods hoping to find someone to help her escape.  She comes across a cabin in the middle of the woods and desperately bangs on the door trying to get someone to let her in.  The owner of the cabin is Kyle (Michael Biehn).  He lives a lonely life in the woods and does not want any trouble but very reluctantly opens the door to let her in.  She explains that her and her friend Mary were partying in the woods with 2 cops when Harrison killed her friend.  Now Kyle is involved with what he does not want to be involved in but little by little she earns his trust and he wants to help her.  Kyle is no stranger to law enforcement and knows how to take care of himself around cops.  With the deck stacked against them they are trying to defeat all odds and prove that a cop is guilty of murder.

I was rather impressed with what they did with this movie.  The story and the script were well written.  I enjoyed the movie from the beginning till the end.  The production quality seems a little cheap at times, but then again this is not a Hollywood blockbuster release.  If you rank this in the pile of direct to video movies that come out every year I would put this right at the top.  The performance of Michael, Danielle and Jennifer are fantastic.  I thought Michael did a tremendous job of playing the part that he did.  It's a side of him in acting that I have never seen before.  A dark, creepy character and yet he is also very vulnerable at times.  The one thing that I was not expecting was all the nudity that is in the movie.  While I am not complaining in the least, it was just unexpected. 

All in all I really enjoyed watching The Victim.  I really did not know what to expect when I picked this up at Best Buy the day it came out.  I knew it was coming out soon and they had just had the premiere in Hollywood the night before Michael and Jennifer made their appearance at Horrorhound a few weeks ago.  I went all out and got the Blu Ray version which looked pretty good, not great.  Since I purchased this 2 weeks ago I have watched it 2 times.  I usually do not watch a movie more than once in that short of time but this one deserved another look.  The gritty, sleazy look that this movie has is unmistakable and makes one hell of a movie for Michael's first film in the directors chair.  I'm looking forward to more movies put out by him in the future.