Cheap thriller is in way over its head

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This article was published 04/05/2018 (3033 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Scotsman David Tennant is perhaps best known for the British sci-fi series Doctor Who, in which he played a notably likable version of the time-travelling doctor. But Tennant also has portrayed some memorable baddies, including the monstrously controlling villain from Jessica Jones.

Fans of Bad Tennant might be thinking about checking out Bad Samaritan. Unfortunately, even Tennant operating at peak high-strung, jaw-clenched, laser-eyed intensity can’t salvage this mess.

A psychological thriller with a goofy grasp of psychology and few thrills, this formulaic film features the kind of ineptitude that might be funny if it weren’t rather unpleasant at the same time.

The story is set in Portland, Ore., home to thousands of struggling millennials.

Our hapless hero, Sean Falco, is played by Robert Sheehan, a young Irish actor with an open face, an irresistible accent and a certain natural charm.

Unfortunately, the movie works way too hard to tell us Sean is charming. Sure, he robs houses. He and his buddy Derek (Carlito Olivero) are restaurant parking valets who use their customers’ cars and keys to access the marks’ empty homes while they dine. But they rob only from the really rich and the very rude.

Plus, Sean uses the money only to give his hardworking Irish mother a nice birthday present and support his dream of being a Portland-type creative. He’s a photographer and he refuses to take a commercial job and work for The Man. So, he’s following his bliss (and also, you know, robbing houses).

One night, Sean and Derek get a customer who fits their rich-and-rude criteria — and how. Cale Erendreich (Tennant) is driving a Maserati, shouting into his phone about offshore accounts and being casually abusive to serving staff.

Sean has no compunctions about breaking into this jerk’s house. But he runs into quite a dilemma when he stumbles onto a young woman (Kerry Condon) chained up in a room ominously lined with plastic sheeting.

Unable to free her and panicked by Cale’s premature departure from the restaurant, Sean bolts.

He later reports what he has seen to the police, who are both skeptical and incompetent. Sean is left to rescue the woman by himself, even as Cale is tracking him down, intent on murderous revenge.

This might have played out as a suspenseful cat-and-mouse game, except the plotting is so implausible and the characterization so shallow that the stakes never feel real.

The scripting, from Brandon Boyce (2005’s Venom), is comically clunky, while director Dean Devlin (Geostorm) can manage only a movie-of-the-week look and feel.

Bad Samaritan also channels the worst aspects of Hollywood’s infatuation with serial murderers, the psycho-killer having a backstory that is both elaborate and ridiculous.

Cale’s pathological interest in order and discipline — “I will correct you,” he hisses at one point — evidently involves childhood trauma, horses and a dressage fetish, something that is emphasized in hazy flashbacks and in Cale’s present-day penchant for spooky equine-related art.

Tennant, to his credit, is doing all sorts of things that might be scary in a scarier movie. Sheehan also tries hard. At times, he seems to be telegraphing that, yes, he could do better with better material.

But the material in Bad Samaritan is skimpy. “We’re in way over our heads here,” Derek says at one point.

The same is true of the filmmakers.

alison.gillmor@freepress.mb.ca