This film is cheesy, grainy, bloody, ethically questionable, badly constructed, poorly acted, and contains enough nudity to fill a weekend of Cinemax After Dark...I couldn't have had a better time. Former CIA agent Stanley Cashay (Randy Russell) is a drunk bum who passes out on bar bathroom floors and takes a raw egg in his whiskey for breakfast. His wife was murdered a while back, and he drifts around Milwaukee. As he is about to shoot himself, his old spy agency comes a-calling. It seems two briefcases have been stolen from presidential candidate Squire Parks (Michael Sottile), and Cashay is the only one who can retrieve them. What follows is a convoluted plot in which the balding, middle-aged Cashay gets sober, then calls on his old cronies from the agency to assist him. Double crosses pile upon double crosses, and the bodies begin to pile up as well.
I am a huge fan of grindhouse flicks. I find a hard "R" flick from decades ago more entertaining than internet porn...then again, I'd find a root canal more entertaining than internet porn. Writer/director Frankie Latina has taken the exploitation genre and done an incredible job with this film. The picture has a wonderful, grainy quality to it, and often switches from color to black and white stock. Characters are introduced, then hurt or killed off; they seem to have no purpose other than to serve the needs of a gore-loving audience. The tortures that Dallas Deacon (Mark Borchardt) must endure border on the morbidly hilarious. Danny Trejo has a few scenes as CIA director Holiday, but he seems to be in on the joke, and is fun to watch. The wonderfully appropriate musical score is credited to six different people, and even features a wailing theme song that sounds like a reject from a 007 spoof. The sound design is excellent, especially for a film of such a, ahem, limited budget. I wasn't sure what was going on once in a while, but Latina keeps building the violence and nudity until a hilariously explosive finale. Also, we get to find out what is actually IN the briefcases, thank you for not going Tarantino or "Ronin" on us. "Modus Operandi" is short enough to not wear out its welcome, and it is gory, dirty fun. I watched it on a lark, it seems to have been filmed on a lark, and it's great stuff.
I am a huge fan of grindhouse flicks. I find a hard "R" flick from decades ago more entertaining than internet porn...then again, I'd find a root canal more entertaining than internet porn. Writer/director Frankie Latina has taken the exploitation genre and done an incredible job with this film. The picture has a wonderful, grainy quality to it, and often switches from color to black and white stock. Characters are introduced, then hurt or killed off; they seem to have no purpose other than to serve the needs of a gore-loving audience. The tortures that Dallas Deacon (Mark Borchardt) must endure border on the morbidly hilarious. Danny Trejo has a few scenes as CIA director Holiday, but he seems to be in on the joke, and is fun to watch. The wonderfully appropriate musical score is credited to six different people, and even features a wailing theme song that sounds like a reject from a 007 spoof. The sound design is excellent, especially for a film of such a, ahem, limited budget. I wasn't sure what was going on once in a while, but Latina keeps building the violence and nudity until a hilariously explosive finale. Also, we get to find out what is actually IN the briefcases, thank you for not going Tarantino or "Ronin" on us. "Modus Operandi" is short enough to not wear out its welcome, and it is gory, dirty fun. I watched it on a lark, it seems to have been filmed on a lark, and it's great stuff.