The Refuge – Review

Directed by: Keith Sutliff

Runtime: 98 minutes

Look, I struggled to watch The Refuge. The first ten minutes was a sequence in which our main character, Marcus (played by writer-director Keith Sutliff) drives around the streets of Hollywood.

That’s it.

We understand he’s on his way to kill someone, which should be interesting, but instead I found my attention wandering—and when it returned a few minutes later, we were unfortunately still driving. This early mistake could have been overlooked if it weren’t such a common occurrence throughout the bulk of the film. So much of the (admittedly bare) plot is filled with driving that it soon becomes redundant. Maybe the film should’ve been called Drive? Oh wait.

However, there were some great elements. The score was really enjoyable and fit the intended mood of the film. I enjoyed some of the camera work but it had the habit of drawing attention to itself, which really undermined the gritty observational feel of the film. Oftentimes I wished the cinematography was a bit more adventurous. Close-ups were heavily utilised, which at times gave an intimate feeling but other times felt claustrophobic. I believe some of these close-ups were used to hide the set design, which was practically non-existent and could have greatly improved the visual impact of this film. Lighting was similarly uninspired, giving too much detail to otherwise mysterious scenes.

Marcus, our conflicted hitman—whose sole possessions seem to be a bottle of bourbon, a duffle bag and like, two guns—gives an often silent and monotone performance. He’s well respected as a talented and efficient worker but for the most part we don’t see him do anything interesting on screen. He mostly just drives around and stares blankly at anyone speaking to him. Perhaps Sutliff intended for this to make Marcus appear meditative, but it only serves to make him boring and difficult to care about.

Other characters are similarly impaired. Frank (Julian Cesario), as our villain, is non-threatening and at times, unintentionally laughable. Staci (Reine Swart), Marcus’ sister (girlfriend? Friend? Assistant?) is vague, and largely serves to repeat what we just saw in the last scene. I believe she is meant to serve as the only person that Marcus cares about, but I find it hard to believe that this dead-eyed automaton loves anything (other than his bourbon). Watts (Matthew Webb), as Marcus’ sometime partner, rambles almost pathologically and it’s hard to tell what is a nuance of character and what is a flaw of the script, as several of the characters in this film have the same habit. In the end, the only character I had any interest in was Marcus’ neighbour, Rachel (Stefanie Estes). For some reason, she has a little crush on Marcus and I congratulate Estes on her great job of pretending to ignore his blank face and monotonous eyes. Unfortunately, she (like many other characters) only appeared in one scene before disappearing forever.

Plot-wise, everything interesting happens off-screen and is then narrated by characters. We see very little of this violent and powerful underbelly that we’re supposed to be afraid of. Our villain is rarely onscreen and despite the fact that he specifically asked Marcus not to call him, he always seems down for a late night deep and meaningful where he regularly tells Marcus to “gimme my money”. The script is rife with genre clichés: briefcases, Russian mobsters with bad accents, gun cleaning and alcoholism. They don’t feel like homages, they feel like an over-reliance on prior storytelling to hide a script lacking in substance.

The Refuge is a 90-minute film that would’ve been much better served in 10. If you cut out all the driving sequences, the rambling monologues, pointless conversations and underserved characters, you might piece together a tense and efficient drama that meets its goal of holding the audience in suspense. Unfortunately, this film exists as an overlong, often boring, and pale imitation of other films in its genre. I can applaud the score and what was obviously a very particular vision from the writer-director but unfortunately, the concept was obviously too bloated for either the capability or budget (or both) of the production.