While Quentin Tarentino may think Death Proof is his worst film, there’s no denying it jump-started the acting career of stuntwoman Zoë Bell, who seems to have reached her career potential in the above theatrical trailer for Josh C. Waller’s directorial debut, the woman vs. woman battle film Raze. Is it a twist on the old women-in-prison flicks, or maybe an estrogen-filled throwback to movies like Bloodsport and Best of the Best? Both? Neither? I have no idea.
One thing’s for certain: this trailer, via Yahoo! Movies, looks like the best movie you could ever possibly hope to find on cable after drunkenly arriving home from a bar, needing something to watch while some kind of food is heated in the oven. It’s straight out of the 1980s, only with better effects and 30 years’ worth of professional wrestling to pay attention to. No, this kind of movie isn’t for everyone, but it will certainly entertain a lot of likeminded people. The kind of people who get home drunk and bake stuff.
The plot, which doesn’t seem very deep, focuses on a building where women are abducted and forced to fight one another. Everyone is fighting for the safety of their loved ones, and I’m assuming that they’re all fights to the death, which is just a whole lot of death involved for one movie, since there are 50 women competing. Why does Sabrina get to be so damned special? I guess we’ll find out.
Another Death Proof vet, Tracie Thoms, stars, along with Rachel Nichols (Continuum), Bailey Ann Borders (The Change-Up), Rebecca Marshall (Saw 3D) and a bunch of other women who get their faces knocked backwards. The entire knuckle-crunching scheme is being run by genre king Doug Jones (Hellboy) and an authoritative Sherilyn Fenn (Twin Peaks). Rosario Dawson is even in this thing.
In a post-Fight Club world, a movie about fighting as catharsis probably needs to go a little deeper into society’s woes without trying to make these fights about finding one’s womanhood. Do I care if it all comes off as sexist? No, because I’m not offended by anything, but I do hope Raze toes the exploitative side of the line rather than trying to make a real point, because I think that would fall flat onto a cobblestone floor.
Check out the awesome poster for the film, as well as the previously released trailer. Find this film when it comes out both in theaters and VOD on January 10, 2014, and then we can discuss it nicely without raising any fists.
