Review: ‘5Lbs of Pressure,’ starring Luke Evans, Rory Culkin and Alex Pettyfer

March 25, 2024

by Carla Hay

Rudy Pankow and Luke Evans in “5Lbs of Pressure” (Photo courtesy of Lionsgate)

“5Lbs of Pressure”

Directed by Phil Allocco

Culture Representation: Taking place in New York City, the dramatic film “5Lbs of Pressure” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with some African Americans and a few Asians) representing the working-class, middle-class and criminal underground.

Culture Clash: After spending 16 years in prison for murder, an ex-con is paroled and tries to form a bond with his estranged teenage son, as the brother of the ex-con’s murder victim contemplates getting revenge on the ex-con. 

Culture Audience: “5Lbs of Pressure” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of the movie’s headliners and tacky crime dramas that are trying to be more artistic than they really are.

Alex Pettyfer and Rory Culkin in “5Lbs of Pressure” (Photo courtesy of Lionsgate)

“5Lbs of Pressure” tries to be a gritty and realistic crime drama with multiple storylines converging. But the clumsy handling of the plot and the vapid dialogue result in an unappealing mush of a movie that lacks suspense. If you can imagine what 2005’s “Crash” would be if it had a lower budget and all of the main characters were connected in some way to criminal activities, then you have a pretty good idea of what type of movie “5Lbs of Pressure” wants to be but comes up very short.

Written and directed by Phil Allocco, “5Lbs of Pressure” is based on his 2005 short film “The Mirror.” The title of “5Lbs of Pressure” refers to a scene in the movie when someone with a gun tells one of the main characters that the gun has only five pounds of trigger pressure. It’s a title that is meant to convey how little strength it takes to pull the trigger on a gun that can kill.

So much of “5Lbs of Pressure” looks like it wants to be artistically meaningful, but the movie has a shaky foundation of a substandard screenplay and unfocused direction that are not helped by unimpressive acting from most of the cast members. The movie takes place in New York City but was actually filmed in Manchester, England.

In “5Lbs of Pressure,” there are three main characters whose lives cross paths in the movie’s big climactic scene.

  • Adam DeSalvo (played by Luke Evans) is a recently paroled ex-con, who spent 16 years in prison for murdering a young male stranger because of a petty argument.
  • Eli (played by Zac Adams) is the angry younger brother of the guy who was murdered.
  • Mike (played by Rory Culkin) is a dimwitted drug dealer who really wants to be a professional musician.

“5Lbs of Pressure” goes through a tedious and often lackluster back-and-forth between showing the storylines for these three characters. Adam is first seen showing up unannounced at the workplace of his friend Steve (played Jazz Lintott), who owns a small business. Adam has recently been discharged from a halfway house and needs a place to live. The best that Steve can offer at the moment is a cluttered and small storage room, which Adam accepts.

Adam tells his parole officer Patricia Earl (played by Julee Cerda) that he’s gotten a job as a bartender at a pub called Mirror Bar, located in Brooklyn’s Red Hook neighborhood. The opening scene of “5Lbs of Pressure” shows Mirror Bar from the outside at night, while gunshots are being fired inside the bar. The movie then circles back to this scene to show what happened during this shootout.

As an example of how poorly written “5Lbs of Pressure” is, parole officer Patricia tells Adam that because he’s a convicted murderer on parole, he’s not supposed to have a job where he will be around a lot of alcohol. He’s also not supposed to be in places, such as Mirror Bar, which are known hangouts for criminals. Adam tells her that having this job is better than being unemployed, so Patricia quickly drops the matter.

In reality, a parole officer could get in serious trouble for knowing about this parole violation and not doing anything about it. There would also be other people who could easily find out about this parole violation and get Adam in trouble. But “5Lbs of Pressure” doesn’t care about those realistic details because of how it wants to contrive the movie’s climactic scene at Mirror Bar.

Meanwhile, Mike works for his uncle Leff (played by Alex Pettyfer), a local drug dealer who has a nasty temper and who constantly disrespects and belittles Mike. Leff sells cocaine and marijuana, but he thinks he has “ethics” because he refuses to become a heroin dealer, no matter how lucrative the offer. Leff’s sister, who was Mike’s mother, died of a heroin overdose.

Eli, Mike and a thug named Sicky (played by James Oliver Wheatley) work for Neff. All of them regularly snort cocaine. Mike and Eli are in a rock band together that’s on the level of playing small nightclubs, but the band seems to be going nowhere its career. Mike is more committed to being a musician than Eli is.

Eli is currently preoccupied with thoughts of revenge because he knows that Adam has been paroled. Eli and his widower mother Anna (played by Olivia Carruthers) are upset that Adam didn’t get a longer prison sentence. Eli is offended that Adam has gone back to live in the same neighborhood where Eli’s family lives. Eli is also having some relationship problems with his girlfriend Lori (played by Savannah Steyn), who doesn’t want to live in New York City anymore.

There’s a very monotonous part of the movie about Mike wanting to do a heroin deal that would get him out of debt to a local gang boss named E.R. (played by Gary McDonald), but Neff is completely against the idea of dealing heroin. Mike secretly goes to Neff’s drug supplier Jamal (played by Lorraine Burroughs, doing a very fake-sounding Caribbean accent) to set up the heroin deal on his own, without telling Leff. You know where all of this is going, of course.

One of Neff’s customers is a rebellious 16-year-old named Jimmy (played by Rudy Pankow), who was told all of his life by his bitter single mother Donna (played by Stephanie Leonidas) that she and Jimmy were abandoned by Jimmy’s father, whom she was married to for an unnamed period of time. Jimmy will soon find out that Donna didn’t tell Jimmy the entire truth: Jimmy’s father Adam wasn’t there for them because he was in prison for murder for the past 16 years, and she cut off all contact with Adam. Jimmy was born while Adam was in prison.

This major plot point (which is not spoiler information) is another example of how the “5Lbs of Pressure” screenplay is badly conceived. Considering that Jimmy and Donna live in the same area where Adam used to live before Adam went to prison, it’s very hard to believe that Jimmy wouldn’t be able to find out what happened to Adam before Adam got out of prison. It’s as if the “5Lbs of Pressure” filmmakers want viewers to believe that no one in the community would tell Jimmy the truth about Adam, or that Jimmy is incapable of doing an Internet search.

At any rate, “5Lbs of Pressure” tries to shoehorn in some family melodrama and sentimentality, as Adam tries to get back in Jimmy’s life, against the vehement objections and disapproval of Donna. Adam is a recovering drug addict who likes to draw illustrations in his spare time. Adam shows his drawing talent to Jimmy and encourages Jimmy to start drawing too.

“5Lbs of Pressure” isn’t a completely terrible movie. It just has just too many boring or idiotic scenes that outnumber anything in the film that can be considered enjoyable entertainment. The acting performances range from adequate to lackluster to awful. The movie’s ending is meant to be “shocking,” but it’s actually quite predictable because of all the clues that are telegraphed so blatantly. “Crash” is remembered for being a controversial Oscar winner for Best Picture, but “5Lbs of Pressure” can’t even claim to be very memorable at all.

Lionsgate released “5Lbs of Pressure” in select U.S. cinemas, on digital and VOD on March 8, 2024.

Review: ‘Spell’ (2020), starring Omari Hardwick and Loretta Devine

October 30, 2020

by Carla Hay

Omari Hardwick in “Spell” (Photo courtesy of Paramount Pictures)

“Spell” (2020)

Directed by Mark Tonderai

Culture Representation: Taking place primarily in the rural Appalachian area of West Virginia, the horror flick “Spell” has a predominantly African American cast of characters (with a few white people) representing the poor, middle-class and upper-middle-class.

Culture Clash: After a plane crash, an attorney who’s a family man finds himself held captive by a hoodoo priestess who uses body parts for her potions.

Culture Audience: “Spell” will appeal primarily to people who like to see gory movies with voodoo/hoodoo themes, but the movie has too many dumb plot holes to be considered a quality story.

Omari Hardwick and Loretta Devine in “Spell” (Photo courtesy of Paramount Pictures)

The horror movie “Spell” has an interesting social theme that is rarely seen in narrative films: The class divide and prejudices that can exist between African Americans who are upper-middle-class and African Americans who have less financial advantages. Unfortunately, this theme, which could have made “Spell” a more interesting film, is squandered and buried in order to go to down yet another predictable and gory horror path. Even the suspenseful scenes are badly handled with plot holes that ruin any credibility that “Spell” hoped to have.

Directed by Mark Tonderai and written by Kurt Wimmer, “Spell” begins with the introduction of the family who will be involved in the fateful plane crash that sets off this movie’s horror. Marquis T. Woods (played by Omari Hardwick) is a successful corporate attorney working in an unnamed big city in the United States. He’s well-respected by his boss Wyman Thatcher (played by Andrew Jacobs) at the law firm.

Marquis is a very tough and very competitive lawyer who doesn’t let the fact that he’s African American get in the way of wanting to win a case if the opponents are also African American. During a conversation between Wyman and Marquis, they discuss a class-action lawsuit where the plaintiffs are African American and the plaintiffs’ attorneys are white. The law firm that Marquis works for is representing the defendants in the lawsuit, and Marquis is the lead attorney in the case.

The exact details of the lawsuit aren’t revealed in the story, but it’s implied that it has to do with accusations of racial discrimination. In other words, Marquis doesn’t really care if people might think of him of being a “race traitor” for representing the defendants in this case. He just wants to win.

He might be a ruthless attorney in the courtroom, but at home, Marquis is a loving and loyal family man with a disciplinarian streak and hints of being a control freak. The movie opens with a somewhat odd scene of Marquis’ wife Veora Woods (played by Lorraine Burroughs) accidentally locked in their bedroom. She pleads with Marquis, who’s on the other side of the door, to break down the door and let her out. He refuses because he says the door cost $1,500.

As a prank, Marquis pretends that he can’t do anything to help her, and he says that he’s going to call a locksmith. It could take more than an hour for a locksmith to come over and break the lock and then replace it. Veora says she doesn’t have that kind of time.

After some more begging and pleading from Veora, Marquis finally puts Veora out of her misery and uses a pin to unlock the door. She rushes out with relief, but she’s slightly irritated that Marquis would put her in this uncomfortable situation as a joke. It shows a manipulative side to Marquis that may not be violent, but it demonstrates how he might get some pleasure out of seeing people squirm.

Therefore, it comes as no surprise that Marquis has an abusive past. When he was a child, his father often beat, tortured and emotionally abused Marquis, who is so haunted by these memories that he still has nightmares about the abuse. (In flashback scenes, Ri-Karlo Handy plays Marquis’ father, while twins Bodhi Tonderai-Hodges and Sahara Tonderai-Hodges portray Marquis as a child.)

Marquis also grew up very poor in the Appalachian area of West Virginia. It’s a past that he left behind 25 years ago and doesn’t want to go back to anytime soon. Marquis hasn’t lied about his personal history of growing up poor and abused, but he’d rather forget that it happened. And it fuels his drive to be as wealthy and successful as possible.

That’s why he’s instilled in his teenage kids—son Tydon “Ty” Woods (played by Kalifa Burton) and daughter Samsara “Sam” Woods (played by Hannah Gonera)—who are both in their mid-teens, a strong sense of wanting them to become high achievers. But with that ambition also comes a certain snobbery where Sam and especially Ty look down on people who are poor and unsophisticated. Ty doesn’t hesitate to call other black people the “n” word if he thinks they’re of a lower class than he is. When Veora hears Ty use this racial slur, she scolds him and tells him that she doesn’t want him to use that language.

In another scene, Veora tells Marquis in front of their kids that she’s worried about the children turning into entitled jerks. Marquis responds by saying, “If I had my way, your son and daughter will spend their lives in a boardroom, not in some jungle I couldn’t get out of fast enough.” Veora says, “Except sometimes, Marq, that jungle comes back to find you, no matter what boardroom you’re hiding in.”

This conversation takes place on a private single-engine, four-seat plane that Marquis is piloting, with Veora, Ty and Sam as the passengers. They are on the plane because Marquis has been notified that his father has died, and the family is going to back to Marquis’ hometown in West Virginia for the funeral and to take care of some other matters related to the death.

Marquis makes a pit stop in a rural area at a small-strip gas station with a convenience store. An elderly man (played by Leo Wringer) who works at the gas station and a young man (played by Tafara Nyatsanza) who happens to be there too are exactly the type of “country” African Americans who make Marquis and Ty uncomfortable. Ty doesn’t do much to hide his condescension, while these two local men think that Marquis and his family are stuck-up city folks.

Marquis and his family aren’t at the gas station for long, when the local sheriff (played by Tumisho Masha) pulls up to find out why this small plane has landed in his jurisdiction. Marquis reminds the sheriff that it’s legal for him to land there, since it’s a single-engine plane. Marquis also shows his pilot license and tells the sheriff why they’re at the gas station. The sheriff is friendly but a little wary of these newcomers.

After the plane is back in the air, a massive storm hits and the plane looks like it’s in danger of crashing. The crash is actually never shown in the movie. The next thing that happens is that Marquis wakes up in a bed in a house attic, with a head injury and his left foot bleeding and bandaged. Where is he and what happened to his family?

Marquis finds out that he’s being held captive at a farmhouse by a woman named Eloise (played by Loretta Devine), a demented voodoo priestess who has a dual persona of being a friendly “church lady” and a wicked witch. Her mood swings are unpredictable, but largely based on whether or not she thinks she’s in control of a situation. She can get menacing very quickly if she thinks Marquis is trying to escape.

Eloise tells Marquis that he was found in the plane crash, and she insists that no one else was with him. Marquis doesn’t quite believe her and he desperately wants to escape and find his wife and kids. Eloise, who calls herself a “root worker,” says that she doesn’t believe in a lot of technology and inventions, such as phones, computers, radios and television.

The rest of the movie is basically a series of attempted escapes by Marquis, who finds out that Eloise uses body parts (human and animal) for her potions and spells. She tells Marquis she can nurse him back to health with the Boogity, a hoodoo doll that she has made from his skin and blood. She blows powdered potion in Marquis’ face to drug him. And later, Marquis witnesses a revival meeting with Eloise working her magic on some local people with disabilities.

Ms. Eloise has two accomplices who help her keep Marquis captive on her run-down farm: Earl (played by John Beasley), who seems to be Eloise’s love partner/common-law-husband, and a hulking handyman named Lewis (played by Steve Mululu), who looks like he’s strong enough to permanently injure someone with his bare hands. Miss Eloise says of Lewis, “People think he’s slow, but there’s nothing slow about him.”

Later, when Marquis asks Eloise if she really believes in the hoodoo that she practices, she responds in an irritated tone, “I guess I have to. We don’t have much in the way of Obamacare around here.” She also responds to Marquis’ obvious condescension toward her beliefs and lifestyle: “You a city boy. You better than all of this.”

There are a few moments where “Spell” goes from being a mildly interesting horror movie to being a disappointing dud with too many plot holes to ignore. The first big nonsensical moment comes when Marquis gets a chance to run away and escape, but instead he sticks around to watch one of Eloise’s revival gatherings. The second and more improbable scenario that plays out is when Marquis removes a very long nail from his injured foot (the nail is so long that it would definitely destroy tendons) and then shoves it back in his foot, for reasons that are shown in the movie.

What’s ludicrous about these scenes with Marquis removing the nail and then putting it back in his foot, is that in real life, he would go into medical shock if he performed those procedures on himself and would most likely pass out from the shock and infections. And yet, he’s still able to run around (with a limp) before and after this self-surgery. It can’t be stressed enough that this is not a tiny nail. The nail is almost as long as his foot. The only reason to have these unrealistic scenes of Marquis removing the nail and slamming it back in his foot is to just have a gross-out scene that people will remember about this movie.

As for the acting in “Spell,” Devine at least seems to be having some fun hamming it up in this role as the unhinged hoodoo priestess Eloise. However, there’s absolutely no real backstory for this character (there’s only a small hint), and Eloise ends up being a generic villain after a while. In fact, all of the characters are fairly generic, as are most of the performances in this movie. There are hints of Marquis’ complicated and traumatic personal history, but any further exploration of his troubled past is largely abandoned when the rest of the story becomes about his kidnapping ordeal.

“Spell” needed to bring something fresh and creative to the story, considering that the 1990 Oscar-winning horror film “Misery” already set a gold standard for a movie about a man held captive by an evil woman who does something awful to his legs. The ending of “Spell” is very unimaginative, predictable and feels too rushed. The movie’s production design and cinematography are very effective, but the screenplay and overall direction lack the spark, cohesiveness and personality that are needed to make a better-than-average film. The good news for people turned off by “Spell” is that it’s highly unlikely to get a sequel.

Paramount Pictures released “Spell” in select U.S. cinemas, on digital and on VOD on October 30, 2020.

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