Axe

Terrible.
<strong>Greed</strong> (Ron Wolotzky, 2006)

In the early nineties, Ron Wolotzky was pretty big news in Hollywood as one of the principals on the popular HBO series <em>Dream On</em>. After that, he pretty much fell off the face of the earth until <em>Greed</em> (also released as <em>Axe</em>), his 2006 feature film debut. If you were expecting comedy, or envelope-pushing for that matter, you will be sorely disappointed in this generic survival thriller.

Plot: two women, who through the magic of movies are unbelievably hot despite having just been on a week-long rock climbing trip, have the bad luck to stop in a small desert town where there is some sort of big con going down--and immediately get pulled in as pawns, scapegoats, or any other role, depending on what side is doing the talking at the time. All of which sounds pretty exciting (and can be done very well onscreen, viz. Stone's <em>U-Turn</em>), but... isn't.

Let's...

pretty good b-movie
this is a low-budget thriller with no-name actors but the director did the best with what he had and got the most out of his performers. it is a combination horror (psycho)/thriller combined with a crime story. two pretty girls run afoul of some bad bikers, and steal a bag full of money. then they are pursued by the bikers, a crooked law enforcement officer and a psycho-maniac freshly escaped from a local mental hospital! talk about a lot of bang for your buck! it's like watching 2-3 movies all at once. some blood and guts, and lots of profanity. no nudity but sexual situations are strongly implied. the tables are turned on you more than once and there is a surprise ending to shock you one last time. actress Darlena Tejeiro reminds me a lot of michelle rodriguez. hope to see much more of her in the future.

Is it horror or a thriller?
It is a story of an ax murderer that escaped from death row. That is why it says Axe on the DVD cover. I guess that wasn't good enough when it was released in 2004, so they renamed it and brought it out again in 2006 as Greed, a story of greedy people after $300,000.

POSSIBLE SPOILER: Everyone, and I do mean everyone, in the movie is after the money.

This coulda been a contenda. I spent the entire movie watching Darlena Tejeiro. I was absolutely enchanted with this beauty. She was a rock climber, but the best mountains in the movie remained covered in clouds, and we never saw the peaks. What a shame! But, I do have to say that she was the best actor in the movie. That doesn't mean I will watch Starsky & Hutch to see her again, but she was good.

The actual ax murders were pretty lame. This could have easily been a PG movie. More thriller than horror.

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