20140323: Drama Review--Cargo

Cargo

1. Fundamentals, reception.
1. American live action feature length film, 2011, rated R, 85 minutes, drama.
2. IMDB: 5.3/10.0 from 500 audience ratings.  Spoken language is English.
3. Rotten Tomatoes: 67% on the meter; 37% liked it from 113 audience ratings.
4. Netflix: 3.2/5.0 from 129,200 audience ratings.
5. Directed by: Yan Vizinberg.  Written by: Lee Peterkin, Yan Vizinberg.
6. Starring: Natasha Rinis as Natasha, Sayed Badreya as Sayed, Philip Willingham as Lukasz, Raul Torres as Kidnapper, Misha Kusnetsov as Val, Seth Ruffer as Joe.


2. Setup and Plot
1. Natasha arrives in Mexico thinking a job is lined up for her in New York.  A driver picks her up, gets the number of a close relative, then takes her passport.  Yikes!  It's time to get the passport back, then run screaming away, whatever it takes.


2. Natasha does not do that.  She gets thrown into a prison with other kidnapped women who are soon to become enslaved sex workers.  After some time, she's sent off to Brooklyn with Sayed.  When Sayed finally lets her out to use the toilet at a gas station, she hits him over the head and tries to run.  Sayed beats her up, then ties her up.  He continues toward New York.


3. Natasha is discouraged when she has to urinate in the van.  When Sayed gets to a truck stop, he listens to her banging and weeping while he rolls something to smoke.  He gets enraged when she kicks out a window.  He tapes her into the front seat.


4. "I'm just a driver," says Sayed.  Sure, Sayed, you have no moral culpability for your active participation in the slave trade.  Soon after, he stops to pray, pointing to Mecca. After this, Natasha tries to bond with Sayed, telling him how she gave a man in Russia 3,000 USD to get an opportunity with an agency in New York.  The money plus her flying to Mexico was all she needed, or so she thought.


5. This is where the movie lost my interest.  The slave bonding with the slaver?  If you enjoy lying, cat and mouse games, cheap shots and gratuitous violence, you'll like the rest of the film.


6. Does Natasha escape?  Do any of the slavers get brought to justice?


3. Conclusions
1. One line summary: A much better film was Abduction of Eden, 2012.
2. One star of five.


4. Scores
1. Cinematography: 7/10 Mostly OK.


2. Sound: 7/10 I could hear the lines spoken.  Music was mercifully minimal.


3. Acting: 0/10 I would have liked to have seen some acting in this two-character film.  One might as well have teleprompter messages instead of people mouthing words.  Neither was believable, even when they revealed that they had been lying previously.  Who cares?  This goes beyond the rottenness of the screenplay.  The bit players were almost as bad as the principals.


4. Screenplay: 0/10 Sayed's self-righteousness is utter and complete nonsense.  His belief that all enslaved women are whores is rubbish.  I could have done without his hatred of the United States.  I could have done without his endless self-serving lies.  Natasha was about the dullest tool in the shed, and was not engaging.  She had opportunities to ditch her kidnapper, and she did not.  His physical brutality seemed about right on for a vicious kidnapper and slaver, which made his lies all the more foul. -- Anyway, the screenplay was repellant, but to no good end whatsoever. -- The ending was the worst part, since the rest of the film did nothing to justify it.