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MVD Marquee Collection: Camino (2015) - Reviewed
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| Courtesy of MVD Visual |
Most filmgoers know
of actress Zoë Bell as the stuntwoman for Quentin
Tarantino’s Kill Bill movies, doubling for Uma Thurman before playing
herself a few years later in Tarantino’s Death Proof segment for the
drive-in movies homage Grindhouse.
Soon after, Bell began making regular cameos in all of Tarantino’s
subsequent projects, solidifying her cult status as one of Tarantino’s favorite
character actresses. Though integral to
Tarantino’s works, Bell has rarely had a prominent central role on the silver
screen and usually remains in the background.
Around 2013 however, that changed with Josh C. Waller’s female
fight-club horror film Raze which featured Bell in the leading role of
the heroine.
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| Courtesy of MVD Visual |
Just a couple of
years later, Waller and Bell reunited, moving from the insular cavernous prison
of Raze to the suffocating jungles of Colombia with their 2015 action
survival thriller Camino.
Co-starring celebrated Spanish filmmaker Nacho Vigalondo in one of his
few acting roles and Kevin Pollak in a minor bit part, Camino follows
renowned war photographer Avery Taggert (Zoë Bell) on a dangerous assignment in
the Columbian jungle. Traveling behind a
group of missionaries led by jungle guide Guillermo (Nacho Vigalondo) intending
to bring supplies to the impoverished.
However, things take a turn when Avery inadvertently photographs Guillermo
doing a cocaine deal followed by murdering a child witness and Avery soon finds
herself being hunted down by Guillermo and his soldiers as she races to try and
expose the truth.
What Bell makes up
for in the rusty acting department (nearly every role she seems to play herself)
consists of ever astonishing physical acting with more than a few scenes of her
character being beaten to near death before gaining the upper hand in the tense
hand-to-hand combat battles. Bell gives
a solid action heroine performance but the real star of this survival of the
fittest thriller is filmmaker Vigalondo who makes Guillermo into a frightening
sociopath ready to kill any and all who cross him with even the slightest
transgression. It begs the question why
Vigalondo hasn’t played more villains in the movies as he is most certainly one
of the heaviest onscreen villains since John Jarratt’s disturbing turn in Wolf
Creek.
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| Courtesy of MVD Visual |
Visually the film
looks thanks to The Boy cinematographer Noah Greenberg who mostly frames
the tense action sequences in claustrophobic close ups with some moments of
panoramic widescreen vistas, and the original electronic score by Kreng (Pepjin
Caudron) helps to keep the tension taut and sharp. As it stands the film is a brutally violent
B-movie featuring one of the greatest stuntwomen in exploitation cinema history
featuring a wickedly psychotic villain. This
could have easily been a forgotten videostore rental were it not for the good
folks at MVD Marquee Collection who sought to rerelease the film with a
plethora of extras. Nothing
groundbreaking but otherwise a solid action suspense thriller programmer.
--Andrew Kotwicki
