Movie Review by Nigel A. Messenger
Starring: Neil Morrissey, Donnie Wahlberg, Adrian Dunbar, Claire Forlani, Michael Rapaport
Director: John Bradshaw
Some small low budget movies get made and they sit on the shelf waiting for distribution like undiscovered gems – TRIGGERMEN found its distribution but would be better off locked away in a vault far away from a film projector or any other means of public display.
The film starts off with Pete (Neil Morrissey) and Andy (Adrian Dunbar) unable to pay the rent on their rundown room but it’s anybody’s guess which country they are in – a point that is highly relevant to the story – as the audience is left to finally work out that they are actually in Chicago. Locations it seems are a real problem for this film because as I’ll explain in a moment the film’s locations can only add to the overall miserable experience that you’ll get when viewing this production.
But back to the story…
To pay the rent Pete and Andy, who incidentally are small time conmen, steal a briefcase which as it turns out contains a down-payment on a mob execution intended for a pair of professional hit men. In order to get the rest of the money Pete and Andy assume the real hit men’s identities and then spend the rest of the movie trying to avoid doing the actual hit. Meanwhile the real hit men Terry (Donnie Wahlberg) and Tommy (Michael Rapaport) take a room in the same hotel to wait for their instructions and one of them, Terry, chats up and falls in love with another one of the guests Emma (Claire Forlani) who turns out to be their target’s daughter.
Highly improbable? Totally, just like the rest of the story – every aspect of it.
This is a movie that’s so bad that even stretching your imagination to its limits won’t help you make the necessary allowances to even partially enjoy the experience.
I suspect the film’s intended to be a sort of dark comedy, but the only joke is the play-off between the cultural differences of the British and the American cast. However that one joke is not only too old in itself but used so badly it makes you groan instead of laugh.
The only good things about TRIGGERMEN are the performances by Donnie Wahlberg and Claire Forlani who both completely outclass the rest of the cast. To be fair Neil Morrissey and Michael Rapaport don’t give bad performances but the overall quality of the script and the film as a whole is so far below par they really are given no decent material to work with.
But the final word really must go to the locations which at a guess I would say were mostly filmed in the one hotel which must have doubled for wherever they were supposed to be. I could be wrong about this of course but wherever they were they could certainly have benefited from a little more of the budget being spent on some more imaginative places to film.
TRIGGERMEN is not the worst film I’ve ever seen but it does its best to get itself into the pretty awful category. And please don’t get me started on the terrible soundtrack…
