Sanctuary

The previous Mark Dacascos movie I watched—buddy kung fu flick Drive (1997)—was hugely entertaining nonsense, with a lightweight but fun plot, likable characters, and very impressive martial arts scenes; Sanctuary, made the following year, is the antithesis of that film, a joyless thriller that takes itself way too seriously, suffers from lifeless direction, and which completely wastes the extraordinary fighting skills of its star.

Dacascos plays CIA agent turned priest Luke Kovak, who finds himself pulled back into the violent world of black-ops espionage by his ex-boss Dyson (Alan Scarfe), who is keen to lay his hands on an incriminating tape that could prevent a senator from becoming security adviser at The Whitehouse. A confusing narrative structure that involves numerous dreary flashbacks, coupled with a plodding pace and a lack of martial arts makes Sanctuary a B-movie bore from start to finish.

An assassin turned priest has to get his bearings - and his guns - when killers are after him… an honest thriller, well filmed, but which never goes beyond its primary goal as video-club fodder, though it was obviously made for the big screen. Dacascos is good though.

I turned to this movie late at night mainly to see Mark Dacascos who is nice to look at, and not a bad actor either! I tend to fall asleep if a movie doesn't keep me interested. Well, I felt that, for a cable action movie (on Action Max) it was entertaining and had an actual plot that made sense. In a series of flashbacks, we see the events that shaped Dacascos's character. It's got plenty of guns, a few explosions, a government conspiracy, bad guys, good guys, a possible good gal, and an ironic ending that is both unexpected and appropriate. This is a flick that both guys and gals can watch - lots of action but not any gore. I wish Dacascos luck in catching a mainstream movie and riding it to the big screen. He deserves it!

SANCTUARY was Dacascos' first movie after the excellent DRIVE, I think, and it shows all the hallmarks of direct-to-video Hollywood junk on the surface. I really wasn't expecting much from it at all, but found myself pleasantly surprised. Mark plays a priest who has something of a dark past... in fact he was a CIA secret agent, trained from childhood to do the dirty off-the-book jobs for the agency without questioning. But he couldn't help questioning, and fled the agency after one particular job. He ended up becoming a priest in an attempt to atone for his past life. But his past life doesn't want to let him escape so easily.

The plot sounds incredibly cheesy and free of subtlety, but the script and direction manage to flesh it out into something with a bit more subtlety. The movie splits its time between flashback to Mark's past and the hunt-chase after he is found doing his priestly work. Mark shows much better acting skills here than in Drive, perhaps because the movie is generally darker & serious in tone. He could have been more expressive and convincing, but I think he did a passable job.

It's not really his acting that has got Mark noticed by the HK cinema crowd though, it's his extremely impressive martial arts skills, which are arguably the best of anybody working in movies anywhere in the world at this time (if we assume that Jackie/Jet/Biao etc are unlikely to ever match their early work again). Although there's a moderately high degree of action in the movie, there's not all that much acrobatics or hand to hand fighting required, so we don't get to see Mark's skills to anything like the extent that they're showcased in DRIVE. He still handles the action well though, and I really can't imagine how some reviewer came to the conclusion that he was "a poor man's Jean Claude Van Damme".

The action scenes are better filmed than I expect from a Hollywood movie, and quite realistic - bullet impacts in particular are almost disturbingly convincing. It has to be noted that Mark gives up his priestly vows a little too easily, and could have been much less lethal at times than he habitually is. I guess it's just his training :D

A less forgiving reviewer might dismiss it as the Hollywood b-grade movie it probably is in objective terms, but I found myself pleasantly surprised and am glad I bought the DVD, as I'll probably watch it again a couple of times. It's a shame the DVD distributors chose, in their infinite wisdom, to release it Pan & Scan though.

This one should have gone to the big screen. It's the different kind of action thriller that everyone has been waiting for. It's got lots of action, drama, and thrilling moments. And in this one everything is not perfect. There are no happy people and endings. This is dark and gloomy. Mark Dacascos stars as Luke Kovak, a former special agent turned priest. But when his former people find out that he's alive they send killers to take him out. Now that was the short version of the plot because there is a back story and subplot that help make this film go along better and feel unique. This film is dipped in darkness and never lets you out of it. It has a gloomy tone and every color is drug out to the fullest extent. Also the film has a noir quality because it's has this brownish tint to every scene. To add to the darkness, there is a dark backstory supplied by flashbacks that explain some of the story and they are very serious. The cast is the normal straight to video cast but Dacascos is great and should try to get out of these b-movies. The spy element is there with gadgets and guns. So action fans will be very happy. Sanctuary is a dark, straight to video spy thriller that is a great watch anytime and a darn good film. A very unique action thriller.