Sanctuary

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 was surprised to find so low rates for this very interesting story, that could have been made so much more of, while instead the technical effects with splatter and murders galore are allowed to take over and dominate, which reduces every quality.

When a boy in Chicago gets his mother murdered in front of his eyes, he is taken care of by a kind of godfather, who educates him to a special agent and perfect assassination engine. He doesn't entirely agree with this kind of education, and although he sticks to his duties and does what must be done, he tries to get away to hide and find some alternative life, disappearing into Nepal and monasteries and eventually becomes a catholic priest, but his past catches him up, and he is involved in some very difficult operation with casualties, which ultimately turns him into an angry rebel. The film starts with his confession in Italy to some priests, and in the end of the film we return to see the results of this interview, which finishes off the story with a surprising but logical twist.

There are some very good scenes, especially when he finds sanctuary with Rachel among the loafers and homeless in a very basic camp under a bridge, and the first operation is carried out under great exciting stress, leading to the clever second operation, while it's the third that takes a critical turn, but ultimately provides a fine finale to this rahter inhuman story - like all spy stories usually are.

Mark Dacascos makes a convincing enough performance, his nervous face betrrays no unnecessary extra acting except tenseness and reminds you of both Mel Ferrer and Montgomery Clift, and the other actors are also good enough. The film is Canadian (Toronto) and consequently rather matter-of-fact and cool without other exaggerations than the extreme brutality and violence.

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!

This is a very well made thriller. It tells the story in flashbacks. Sometimes a little hard to follow, but very interesting. The action scenes are good. Mark gives a good performance. The ending leaves the possibilty of a sequel, which I wouldn't mind seeing.

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.