Kira Reed Lorsch | Through the Shattered Lens

2021’s Love On The Rock definitely has something going for it. It was filmed on the island of Malta.

Malta is a beautiful island nation, sitting between Sicily and North Africa. I spent the summer after I graduated high school in Europe and Malta was one of the many beautiful places that I visited. Along with its gorgeous architecture and the beaches, Malta is also known for being the island where St. Paul and St. Luke were shipwrecked for three months. Paul, it’s said, healed every sick person on the island.

Love On The Rock may be a comedic action film with a religious subtext but, far more importantly, it’s a bit of a travelogue as well. David A.R. White plays Colton Riggs, a former Chicago cop who moved to Malta after the death of his wife. He has his own boat and he makes his living giving tours. (He even has a pre-recorded narration that he plays while navigating the boat.) This allows for several scenes that give us a chance to take in the stunning beauty of the island. Colton also has a friend named Rev. Yearwood (Jeff Fahey), who oversees a church that overlooks the ocean. Again, the view is lovely.

As for the plot, it has to do with the search for a serum that can, in theory, cure any and all diseases. International criminal Claudio Fairbanks (Steven Bauer, who appears to have been dubbed by someone else) wants control of the serum so he sends his associates to raid the Maltese laboratory where it’s being developed. One technician gets away, carrying a vial of the serum with him. Wounded during his escape, the dying man secretly hides the vial on Colton’s boat.

Claudio sends his people, led by Halston Hallstrom (Matthew Marsden), to find the serum. Meanwhile, the head of the CIA (Jon Lovitz …. wait, Jon Lovitz?) sends Josie (Lauriane Gillieron) to Malta to seduce Colton and discover if he knows where the serum is. Of course, Josie actually does fall in love with Colton and eventually, Colton does find the serum and it all ends with a surprisingly laid back confrontation between the bad guy and the good guys.

The film is also a comedy and it’s got a religious message as well. (Josie is offended when Colton acts surprised that a spy would also be religious.) Surprisingly enough, it’s actually pretty adroit when it comes to juggling all of its different genres. David A.R. White and Laurianne Gillieron make for a cute couple and both of them turn out to have good comedic timing. For that matter, I also liked the performance of Nathalie Rapti Gomez, who played a trigger-happy mercenary named Plaza and who gave an entertainingly unhinged performance. In the end, even that stuff that shouldn’t have worked — like casting Jon Lovitz as a spymaster — actually did work. Maybe Lovitz should be the next James Bond.

Love On The Rock is an entertaining and unpretentious action spoof. If nothing else, it’s worth seeing for the beauty of Malta.

2020’s Beckman is one of the most violent faith-based films I’ve ever seen.

Usually, when a religious film is full of death and violence, it’s apocalypse-themed. The rapture has happened. The Anti-Christ is in power. All bets are off. Beckman, however, is not an apocalypse-themed film. Instead, it’s a John Wick rip-off, one in which the Wick-character also happens to be a preacher.

David A.R. White plays Beckman, a former contract killer who stumbled into a church and meets Rev. Philip (Jeff Fahey). Philip converts Beckman, baptizing him and showing him that even a viscous killer can be redeemed. (A Vietnam vet, Philip killed eleven people during the war and it still haunts his nightmares. Incidentally, Jeff Fahey deserves roles in better movies.) When Philip grows sick and dies, Beckman takes over as the church’s pastor. When Philip’s runaway niece, Tabitha (Brighton Sharbino), shows up at the church, Beckman adopts her as his daughter.

One year later, all Hell breaks loose. Gunmen working for rich cult leader Reese (William Baldwin, looking like someone cosplaying Alec for Halloween) storm the church and they kidnap Tabitha. Beckman snaps. He goes back to his old ways, leaving a trail of bodies throughout Los Angeles as he searches for Tabitha. The film becomes a cross of Taken and John Wick with a religious angle tossed in as well. Beckman kills but he constantly hears a voice in the back of his head telling him that he needs to reject his anger.

Beckman does indeed kill a lot of people and I have to admit that it bothered me a bit, just how casual the film got about killing. It made the film’s ending, with Beckman suddenly realizing that he doesn’t need to kill everyone, feel rather hollow. Reese is an Jeff Epstein-like madman who kidnaps teenage girls and makes them a part of his cult. He associates with human traffickers. And yet, when Beckman has a chance to kill him, Beckman suddenly realizes that he doesn’t want to lower himself to Reese’s level. Okay, what about all the people Beckman killed beforehand? I mean, if you’ve already killed 12 people, you might as well take out the worst of them all.

(It reminded me a bit of how Cecil B. DeMille would always be sure to include plenty of sin in the first half of his films so that audiences could enjoy themselves before the second half became all about chastity and redemption. The film portrays a countless number of deaths but still wants its message to be Thou Shalt Not Kill. It feels a bit hypocritical.)

Beckman takes a lot of its cues from John Wick and there are a few effective fight scenes. The film is also divided into chapters and there’s a lot of time jumps, showing that the filmmakers have, at the very least, seen at least one Tarantino film. But the film itself lacks the self-aware humor and the shameless style that made the John Wick films memorable. David A.R. White is not a bad actor but he’s better at light comedy than at killing people. The film ends with what appears to be the promise of a sequel but I’m not sure how many more people Beckman can kill while still claiming to be a preacher.