Reviewed by Rama Gaind.
Director: Brian A. Miller, Defiant Screen Entertainment.
Cast: Sylvester Stallone, Matthew Modine, Ryan Guzman.
An engrossing crime thriller fuelled by memory, family, fury and betrayal, this film has an interesting premise: ‘a thief who can’t remember, a cop who won’t forget.’
Only one survivor is left after a heist goes wrong. Macdonald (Modine, Full Metal Jacket, Stranger Things) has amnesia and is put in a prison psychiatric ward. He can’t remember the crime or where the money has been stored.
After seven years, being frightened by an inmate and a ward doctor he has to break out of prison. He’s injected with a serum that forces him to relive the life he’s forgotten.
Lucas (Guzman, The Boy Next Door, Heroes Reborn) edges up to ‘Mac’ in the hospital cafeteria and offers to get him out. Mac’s sentence ensures he will never see freedom, so he grabs the deal even though he doesn’t remember anything that would be of use to his “rescuers.”
Lucas and Erin (Meadow Williams) and Farren (Tyler Jon Olson) get their hands on some new memory-jogging truth serum. Is it possible … a few treatments and Mac will remember?
Along the way, Macdonald has to evade local law enforcement. Both grizzled Detective Sykes (Stallone) and equally case hardened FBI agent Franks (Christopher McDonald) are on the hunt for Macdonald, with or without the other’s cooperation.
As it happens, the betrayers had murdered Mac’s gang and made off with some of the money. It appears there is also no chance of recovering the missing millions.
Director Miller says he was excited when he received the script for Backtrace. The story had a huge “action hook” which was one of the reasons for the immediate attraction.
It was “extremely exciting because it’s a whodunit, and as you pull that string, it takes you into different places where the audience has no idea where you’re going. But the big finale will blow them away!”
If you correctly tell us the name of the actor who plays Detective Sykes, you could win one of three DVDs of Backtrace. Entries should be sent to [email protected] by next Monday, 11 March 2019. Names of the winners will be announced in Frank Cassidy’s PS-sssst…! column next week.
