Main cast: Michael Biehn (Kyle), Jennifer Blanc (Annie), Ryan Honey (Harrison), Denny Kirkwood (Coogan), and Danielle Harris (Mary)
Director: Michael Biehn
The Victim has a straightforward story. Annie and Mary are two strippers who decide to meet Coogan, a cop, and Harrison, who is going to be sheriff soon, for some fun and games in the woods. Harrison gets a little carried away while having sex with Mary, and ends up killing her. He and Coogan decide to kill Annie too and bury the evidence, but Annie overhears them and flees. She stumbles upon a cottage belonging to the reclusive Kyle and pleads for his help.
Now, this a low budget movie, and honestly, I wasn’t expecting miracles. However, I have to say, a bit more time spent on the plot and acting classes wouldn’t hurt.
The movie is basically a collaboration between family and friends, what with Michael Biehn directing his own script and casting himself and his wife Jennifer Blanc (who is also the executive producer) in the lead roles. While this may stoke the ego and save some bucks, the end result is Mr Biehn looking for the most part bored out of his mind and Ms Blanc manages to overact while resembling dead wood at the same time. Ms Blanc is beaten to the punch by Ryan Honey, who really overacts that I suspect that he’s just hamming it up to cover his embarrassment of being in this movie. Denny Kirkwood, on the other hand, takes lessons from Mr Biehn in sleepwalking through the movie. Only Danielle Harris escapes mostly unscathed, mostly because her character dies quickly into the movie.
The plot takes forever from move from one point to the next, peppered with leaden and often unintentionally hilarious conversations. The script could have been pared to an hour or so, which would make it more focused, because in its current form, there are too many filler scenes that only make the story even more absurd. Most egregious of these filler scenes is the weirdly-timed sex scene. Yes, there are crazy cops out to kill them, but what the heck, let’s have sex anyway, woo-hoo!
The violence is minimal and is kept mostly to the later parts of the movie, and the low budget means that there isn’t much gore or such to keep things entertaining.
Still, I have to say: for a man who is almost 60, Michael Biehn really looks good without any clothes on, far better than most actors his age, so the naughty scene is actually watchable, heh. Still, I don’t think it’s worth enduring this slow and meandering thrill-free movie just to see a hot mature man baring nearly everything on screen.
