Scott Mechlowicz | Through the Shattered Lens

What’s an Insomnia File? You know how some times you just can’t get any sleep and, at about three in the morning, you’ll find yourself watching whatever you can find on cable? This feature is all about those insomnia-inspired discoveries!

If you were having trouble getting to sleep at 3 in the morning, you could have turned over to Showtime and watched the 2011 action film, Cat Run.

So, here’s what you get when you watch Cat Run. You get:

A few beach scenes
Some stylish action sequences
A nearly incoherent plot
Lots of naked people
Two bumbling heroes
A prostitute with a heart of gold, a young child, and an encrypted hard drive
A cold-as-ice female assassin played by a distinguished, Oscar-nominated performer
Massive and sudden changes in tone as the film goes from comedy to action to comedy again
Sex
Violence

In other words, Cat Run is a John Stockwell film. As a director, Stockwell specializes in making unpretentious films, ones that usually feature beautiful people doing stuff on the beach. He makes the type of films that will probably never win an Academy Award (though Kirsten Dunst perhaps deserved a nomination for her performance in Stockwell’s Crazy/Beautiful) but which are still occasionally entertaining if you’re in the right mood for them. (Seriously, just watch Stockwell’s In The Blood and then ask yourself why he could make the perfect Gina Carano film while Steven Soderbergh couldn’t.)

Cat Run takes place is Montenegro. The prostitute is named Cat (Paz Vega). The encrypted hard drive contains footage of a politician (Christopher McDonald) killing a woman at an orgy. The two bumbling detectives who help her out are named Julian (Alphonso McAuley) and Anthony (Scott Mechlowicz) and they occasionally get a funny line or two. The assassin who is sent to take care of Cat is Helen and she’s played by Janet McTeer. Helen is coldly efficient and ruthless killer but she has a difficult time tracking down Cat. That’s the way it always goes, isn’t it? The bad guys are always super competent until the movie begins, at which point they suddenly can’t shoot straight.

Anyway, Cat Run is not a particularly memorable movie but it has its entertaining moments. It’s hyper stylish and the cast seems to be having a good time. At the very least, you get the feeling that everyone probably enjoyed spending their days off in Montenegro and good for them! McTeer, not surprisingly, steals the film but Paz Vega has some good moments too. All in all, this is an enjoyable film that doesn’t have a hint of ambition. It is what it is and what’s wrong with that?

Previous Insomnia Files:

2004’s Mean Creek is one of those films that makes me cry every time.

The story that it tells is, at first glance, a rather simple one. It’s only as you start to dig beneath the surface that you discover just how complex the film really is. Sam (Rory Culkin) is being picked on by the school bully, the overweight George (Josh Peck). When Sam accidentally knocks over George’s video camera while George is filming himself playing basketball, George beats Sam up.

Sam’s older brother Rocky (Trevor Morgan) decided to get revenge and recruits two of his friends to help him out, Clyde (Ryan Kelly) and Marty (Scott Mechlowicz). Their plan is to invite George to Sam’s birthday party and to take him on a rafting trip. Eventually, they plan to challenge him to truth or dare, get him to strip naked, and then basically abandon him.

Needless to say, things don’t quite go as planned.

For one thing, it turns out that George is sincerely happy to have been invited to Sam’s party and he even shows up with a gift. George, it turns out, doesn’t consider himself to be a bully. Instead, he’s just an overweight kid who is insecure about his dyslexia and who doesn’t have any social skills. Once the boys and Sam’s girlfriend Millie (Carly Schroeder) are floating down the creek, they’re forced to reconsider their plans. Some want to forget about it and let George go. Some want to still go through with the plan.

And, meanwhile, poor George continues to be his own worst enemy…

Mean Creek is a fascinating film because George is such an unexpectedly complex character. When we first see him, it’s easy to dismiss him as just your standard middle school bully but, as the film progresses, it becomes apparent that there’s more to George than our first impressions may have suggested. And yet, every time that we start to feel truly sorry for George, he says the wrong thing or he displays some sort of behavior that reminds us of why he was invited to the birthday party in the first place. In the end, we’re as conflicted about him as everyone else on the boat. He’s a bully but he’s not a bad kid. Can we forgive him for being a bully or does he still need to be taught a lesson?

That’s the question at the heart of Mean Creek and the film’s final answer (or, perhaps I should say, lack of a final answer) makes me cry every time. I don’t want to spoil the film for those who haven’t seen it (and everyone should see it), so I’m not going to give any more details about the film’s plot. I’ll just say that Mean Creek is an important film and one that will leave you thinking about what you’ve just seen and how you feel about it.