Red Handed (Review)

Red Handed Had Some Potential.

Red Handed is one of those movies that starts with a solid concept but lacks the experience necessary to mold it into something special. It does have a few things going for it: primarily a capable cast. However, it’s also filled with both cult and occult cliches that we’ve seen a dozen times before (and often done better). Red Handed’s biggest problem is that it is painfully slow at times, especially because it shows its cards too early. 

Family is complicated. At least that’s the message at the center of Red Handed. The movie starts when a patriarch dies suddenly and his sons (Christian Madsen, Owen Burke, and Ryan Carnes) must reunite to scatter his ashes in an Oregon mountain river. Once there, they meet some of their father’s kinfolk who are a little odd (most notable among them is Michael Biehn). Tensions among the brothers slowly build as they try to learn how to be a family again, but things really explode when one of their sons, Louie (Frank Peluso III), is abducted. Desperate to find him, the brothers soon discover that their father’s estranged family members are actually members of a cult hoping to sacrifice young Louie to a demon. 

I really have to emphasize that most of the actors in the film are quite capable. They have enough chemistry and screen presence to keep scenes from dragging too long or becoming too bogged down in tedious melodrama. The problem is that they aren’t given interesting characters to work with. Owen Burke’s “Pete” is easily the most absorbing, simply because he actually has a backstory. As a former abductee, Pete suffered a lot of psychological damage and he has buried the memories deep in his mind. However, as they come flooding back, he ends up making some very interesting and insightful observations. Another memorable character is Caroline Veerland’s “Rachel,” because she is simply insanely hot. Almost too hot… Suspiciously hot… Distractingly hot… Anywho, rounding out the cast are a number of insufferable characters (mostly when it comes to the terribly written women in the film).  Young Louie really takes the cake. I was hoping that he might stay lost from the moment he was taken. The real selling point is the 5 or 10 minutes that Michael Madsen appears in the film as the father, giving audiences a gruff voice over to fill us in on what’s going on.

There are a few parts of Red Handed that are genuinely foreboding.  Over all, it fails to inspire any of the dread that would be necessary to make it really scary (see Midsommar for a good example of that). Instead, it falls back on all the classic cult cliches. There’s a demon that the family worships from biblical times who they must placate by sacrificing children.  The cult is following this tradition because that’s what cults do. Just for good measure, they even toss in an old man with a snake who chants during the final scene. That being said, Pete’s character makes some shrewd pronouncements about the occult and how symbols have a power that can affect us on a psychological level even today, effectively influencing our actions. This stood out because it was genuinely interesting and left me wondering why there wasn’t a lot more of that kind of stuff in Red Handed. That’s the kind of cult stuff I would have loved to have seen in this film.

Red Handed’s greatest downfall is that it is painfully slow at times. Director/writer Frank Peluso effectively undermines himself early on by revealing exactly who can’t be trusted well before the final act. This prevents the audience from wondering if the heroes are in any danger and who the real bad guys are behind this whole incident. It meanders along from scene to scene and taking its sweet time about it. When the action does heat up, there’s no real pay off. The action sequences are awkwardly choreographed and the camera makes no attempt to add to them. Instead, it stands in the corner watching actors wait for their beats to rush in and throw telegraphed punches. The only time it interrupts its stroll is to cut to cumbersome flashbacks that are supposed to provide exposition. It doesn’t work too well because in the end I still had no idea who any of the characters (aside from Pete) really were.

With all of that being said, I want to make it clear that Red Handed is a watchable film. Not good, not bad, but watchable. It certainly has some memorable parts, but I don’t think they’re what Peluso really wants us to remember (a certain scene with Caroline Veerland in a see-through white dress in a river springs to mind). All in all, the core concept is solid, but it should have been tightened up and had the fat trimmed from it. This is most evident in the film’s bumbling attempts to solve plot issues by having characters show up out of nowhere. Still, I didn’t hate Red Handed. More disappointed and annoyed that it squandered what could have been.