You know the rules of David Fincher’s FIGHT CLUB – and it is time to enter a London-based elite version in the brand-new noir drama KNUCKLEDUST.
The title is also the name of the club where bare knuckle, no-nonsense fighting takes place in a MORTAL KOMBAT-cum-Skybet scenario with old war veterans recruited to battle it out in a seven-level lair, presided over by all manner of sleazy male and female protagonists and antagonists, but a massacre has taken place with one man left alive who is subsequently questioned.
Like Bruce Willis in PULP FICTION, lead character Hard Eight (Moe Dunford) has thrown a fight, angering sultry vlllainess and businesswoman Serena (Camille Rowe), thus putting his loved-ones in danger and causing the death of his partner in the process. Inevitably, he has to fight his way to the truth – and a complex web of mix-ups and double-crosses beckon for him and others in the zone….
OK, this is pretty much familiar stuff, with the standard brutal British crime haven that we have grown to love over the years coupled with a USUAL SUSPECTS-style mystery of reflection and flashback that is pretty complex and convoluted plot-wise as you can get in an indie British crime film.
Writer-director James Kermack certainly doesn’t need to pass any further tests with this film in terms of its’ visual impact, which is as brutal as they come and does aspire to be in the realm of Fincher and Tarantino, but with not as much of the social satire that came with those film-makers’ best work.
A good ensemble British cast, which includes Philip Davis as a hit-man and Jaime Winstone as a police officer investigating the club massacre, helps the movie move along at a fair pace, but please do give your brain a fair amount of stimulus before you start watching it, as the plot-lines weave together in the last third of the film to reveal the overall denouement and reason for what has taken place.
