The Movie: Harpoon
The Director: Rob Grant
The Cast: Munro Chambers, Christopher Gray, Emily Tyra
The Story: Rivalries, dark secrets, and sexual tension emerge when three best friends find themselves stranded on a yacht in the middle of the ocean under suspicious circumstances.
The Review:
This movie, is sick, twisted, and gratuitously violent. Oh and I loved every moment of it. Rob Grant has created a tale of youthful excess, exuberance, arrogance, and left any trace of empathy on the cutting room floor. The movie is a dark comedy with a heavy emphasis on the dark and it reminds me a lot of Cheap Thrills, a film with a very similar tone that was also filled with crazy twists and turns and shocks to the system. Grant kicks (and punches) things off almost immediately with a bloody beat down between long time friends before setting sail for even rougher waters ahead.
The cast is pretty much spot on perfect with Christopher Gray as the hot head and overly jealous dud bro, Emily Tyra as the not so innocent girlfriend, and Munro Chambers as the sensitive and socially challenged friend to both. The last time I saw Munro Chambers, he was starring in Turbo Kid, a throwback to 80's scifi movies that, while much more lighthearted in tone, was an equally bloody affair. As an actor, he has definitely progressed since then and his performance in this movie shows a lot more depth and subtlety which is key in a movie where you never quite know what his character's motivations are. I loved how, as the story plays out, allegiances change, truths are slowly revealed, and the three characters never trust each other under any circumstances.
While I don't believe there is any blatant message that Grant is trying to get across with this movie I feel like it does say a lot about the current state of humanity, just in more subtle ways than we usually see. I love the fact that the whole fiasco is kicked off by a misunderstanding that stems from one of the characters reading a series of text messages between the other two with no context and making a very bold assumption. What I love even more is that the messages, the context, and the assumption are just the tip of an iceberg that literally and figuratively sinks the trio's friendship into a gloriously gore filled path of destruction.
Harpoon is an official selection of the 2019 Fantasia International Film Festival.
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