Lala Kent | Through the Shattered Lens

The first question that one might want to ask about 2021’s Out of Death is what is going on with that title.

Out of Death? Did they run out? Is there an issue with the warehouse? Is it a nationwide outage or just a regional problem? How exactly does someone find themselves out of death? I mean, there are plenty of shortages in the world. There are people who can’t get clean drinking water or tasty food. I had to wait an extra day to get my new scanner because of a supply chain issue. These things happen. But people never seem to run out of death. Death is the one thing that we will always in large quantities.

As for the film itself, it is rather death-obsessed. Shannon (Jaime King) is a photojournalist who has recently lost her father. All she wants to do is spread his ashes in the woods. However, when she witnesses a murder in the woods, she finds herself being pursued by a compromised deputy (Lala Kent). Meanwhile, Jack Harris (Bruce Willis) is a retired detective who has recently lost his wife. He wants to spend some time alone in his niece’s cabin but instead, he finds himself mixed up in Shannon’s problems. The corrupt sheriff (Michael Sirow) wants to be mayor and he’s not going to let Shannon and Jack stand in his way, even if it means killing every possible witness.

Even though Bruce Willis gets top-billing along with Jaime King, he’s not in much of Out of Death. Out of Death was one of the many film productions to be delayed by the COVID lockdowns. When production finally did begin, Bruce Willis shot all of his scenes in one day. (The entire film took 9 days to shoot. Roger Corman, if he was still with us, would want to know why the production took 9 days when it could just as easily been done in two.) Sadly, this is one of the films that Bruce Willis made after it became apparent that he was having serious issues with his health. Willis delivers his lines in a halting manner, which technically works for his emotionally shattered character but which is still hard to watch now that we know that Willis was suffering from frontotemporal dementia at the time. Producer Randall Emmett made his career by convincing big stars to appear in B-movies and he shouldn’t be faulted for that. However, the later films he made with Willis not always easy to watch. Say what you will about the films that Sylvester Stallone and Robert De Niro have made with Emmett, they all knew what they were getting into. It’s hard to say whether the same was true with Bruce Willis.

As for Out of Death, it’s a fairly dull cat-and-mouse game but I will give it some credit for capturing the atmosphere that goes along with being isolated in the Southern wilderness. This is a film where you could feel the humidity rising from the screen. And Jaime King, who deserves better, gave a strong performance as Shannon. Otherwise, the most interesting thing about Out of Death is the mystery as to what exactly the title means.

Out of Death? It’s a nice thought.

First released in 2021, American Traitor: The Trial of Axis Sally tells the story of Mildred Gillars, an American women who worked as propagandists for The Third Reich. Gillars would broadcast on German-radio, her show mixing music with propaganda messages that were meant to be heard by American and British soldiers in Europe. Gillars would talk about how wonderfully the war was going for Germany. She would tell the Americans that their mothers, sisters, and sweethearts were waiting for them back in the United States. She was one of the many female Nazi propagandists to be nicknamed “Axis Sally.”

(Interestingly enough, her broadcasts did gather a bit of cult following amongst U.S. personnel in Europe. Even though she was a propagandist, she played music and she also occasionally let slip the location of the German army. As the war progressed, her programs took on a “so bad it’s good” quality as she continued to insist that the Germans were still winning when they clearly weren’t.)

Mildred was arrested after the war ended and charged with treason against the United States. The prosecution claimed that Mildred was a committed Nazi who turned against her home country. Mildred and her defense attorneys claimed that Mildred only stayed in Germany because her boyfriend was there and that Mildred was largely apolitical. They also argued that Mildred would have been sent to a concentration camp if she had refused to do the broadcasts. Mildred Gillars became the first American woman to be convicted of treason. She lost her American citizenship, received a hefty fine, and spent 13 years in prison. Reportedly, she never showed much in the way of regret over being a Nazi propagandist.

It’s an interesting story but you wouldn’t know that from American Traitor, which is largely a vanity project. Meadow Williams not only plays Mildred Gillars but she also served as a producer on the film. Williams is the widow of vitamin tycoon Gerald Kessler. When Kessler died, he left his $800 million dollar fortune to Williams and, reportedly, a bit of that inheritance was used to fund this film. That perhaps explains why a name actor like Al Pacino shows up in the role of Gillars’s defense attorney. Pacino barks his lines with authority and manages to give a credible performance, even though he’s stuck wearing a ridiculous wig. There is absolutely nothing about Williams’s performance that suggests the type of charisma that Mildred Gillars would have needed to become an effective propagandist. She gives a blank-faced and blank-voiced performance, one that might be meant to seem enigmatic but which is instead just boring.

And really, that’s the best way to describe the film. It’s dull. The dialogue is dull. The performances, other than Al Pacino, are dull. Even the film’s visuals are dull. The film has little to say about propaganda, war, guilt, or innocence. It’s a vanity project turned Icarus file.

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