Jade
Jade
The story starts off with an interesting sequence where it is told that Jade along with her younger brother Brandon moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico after losing their parents in London, who were shot by someone. For unknown reasons, the place where it is explained who their parents are and how they came about being in a street gang, which in turn caused Jade to kill her brother, is not mentioned. But for whatever cause, she seems to have vowed not to lay her hands on a gun ever again.
The moment the transition into “live-action” takes place, we are shown Jade (Shaina West, Black Widow, The Woman King) who is visiting Layla (Katherine McNamara, The Arrow, Assimilate) and who is not quite pleased to see her. It could be due to the fact that the child she is expecting will be fatherless, thanks to facets from Jade’s shooting scuffle.
As if that’s not enough for her to cope up with, she true enough becomes the unwilling guardian of a flash disc that bad men who work for Tork(Mickey Rourke, The Wrestler, Angel Heart), the sort of businessman one expects Mickey Rourke to portray. Just how dangerous are these men? At one point, they’re beating someone up to try and get the location of the drive out of somebody. When the victim stands up to metered whacking and hammering of his kneecaps, they are savage enough to drench his face with vinegar. Having accomplished such ferocity, resisters are too well aware that it is beaten to kill him instead.
Jade was announced in 2021 and the release was scheduled for 2022. It was the first full length film directed by stuntman James Bamford (Deep Rising, Apollo 18). It was completed long before the release of Air Force One Down. So what brought it out faster? The screenplay, and here I mean the one which was co-written by Bamford, Lynn Colliar and Glenn Ennis (Gnome Alone), is, I believe, exceedingly unfortunate. Firstly, the dialogue is poorly written, to say the least, and downright horrific to hear at its worst. How is it that when one could unleash a slew of insults, six would be used when a dozen in one sentence certainly gives the characters a stronger persona?
What kind of comedy does Jade call itself? One with an action beat, or the other way around? Jade, for example, ends a fight by cutting her opponent’s throat, and that is how the fight ends. For no reason, blood is sprayed across the wall, and a voice over states “FATALITY” and it sounds completely like Mortal Kombat. Another time, someone is talking and someone else is squabbling in Spanish, while the translation appears on the screen rather than being subtitled. For those interested in numbers, there is even a kill count displayed.
That also applies to how the action scenes are directed. There are some, like this, where the performers simply show what they can do. There are others that seem more like pathetic attempts to create scenes that are fast, slow, and jerky, and have been edited and set to a soundtrack as if they’re from a video game or music video. Or maybe it was simply ridiculous, because at one time, Jade (Halle Bell) tosses her Afro comb like a shuriken and kills someone.
Such a shame, because when Bamford just recording the fights without great variety and tools, they’re not that bad. I can certainly understand West in the context of his moves being convincing enough to be believed in a fight, and unless father time has a major impact on him, Mark Dacascos (Brotherhood of the Wolf, Blade of the 47 Ronin) does not require assistance in orchestrating a convincing brawl. He plays Reese, a childhood friend of Jade’s parents, “INTERPOL? Dad said you had a gym,” and as for his only fight scene in the film, which is the second one featured in the gallery, this is ruined by constant gimmicks indeed.
What is on the hard drive? Rather than explaining the importance of this information which played a role in the death of Jade’s brother, we are left irritated on the fact that Bamford didn’t bother to show it. It was not really a surprise to find her brother dead, was it? There is nothing wrong with the video, in fact, it received a reasonable score. So all we had to wait for was the snappy ending. But the ending was so uninspiring that it left a bitter taste in the mouth of every viewer.
In summary, Jade is a complete bust, it has more action scenes than films funded with a hefty budget only to spoil them with boring camera angles that everyone is already tired of watching.
If you wish to watch Jade, it is accessible on Netflix in various South American nations. If it hasn’t reached your region yet, consider yourself lucky.
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- Genre: Action, Thriller
- Country: United States
- Director: James Bamford
- Cast: Katherine McNamara, Mickey Rourke, Mark Dacascos
