Plot Summary
The film starts with a man (Josh Duhamel) hospitalized in Mexico, suffering acute amnesia. He seems to recall a few details about himself, but his mind is a complete blank regarding where he is, how he got there, and what is happening around him. He has suffered a head concussion along with some deep psychological scars. The nurses attending to him have an exceptionally alarming demeanor. The only ‘clue’ he has about his identity is that people are actively hunting him. He soon realizes his situation is much worse than being just another amnesiac.
The drama escalates when hospital henchmen and assassins attempt to finish him off. With scant information about himself, his identity, or the life he lived, Cain survives the cartel attack by relying on sheer willpower, martial arts skills, and fragmented flashes of memory. As he fights his way through the corridors, trying to unlock the cartel’s obsidian fist around his throat and the sinister grasp around his memory, he realizes who exactly he is and why enduring a painful existence has made him target number one.
We learn his name is Cain—a once undercover operative tasked with extracting a hard disk from the grips of multiple criminal organizations that include the drug cartel—and his identity now sought after by so many. His existence now remains a question mark because the prized possession—the hard disk—has vanished. Equipped with the knowledge that he is the means to retrieving the disk, even if he has no idea the rest of the faint memories scattered throughout the mind, relay clues to where he stashed it, they have one chance.
A DEA Agent with a complicated relationship with Cain named Anna (Abbie Cornish) works behind the scenes, conflicted between their personal history and her responsibilities to the agency. While the cartel intersects with the DEA and other criminal organizations, Cain is forced to decide whether to salvage his life, or bury it and seize a new one.
The culmination of action peeks at the last standoff in the hospital, where everything comes full circle. Cain needs to retrieve all that is left of his past, meet his enemies from all corners, protect the blameless, and make the crucial decision of who earn the title of trust. This all happens in the Cain’s final stage of the most defining moment in life.
Staring Roles and Characters
Cain – Josh Duhamel’s Role
Duhamel adds intensity and physical energy to the role of the protagonist. He assumes the position of a man overwhelmed with internal conflict: on one hand, he is the embodiment of a former self, and on the other hand, a newly emerging identity. He represents the blend of a dangerously efficient killer and a bewildered, insecure man. Both of Duhamel’s character extremes are captured with strong performances that aid the film’s rhythm, which is otherwise chaotic around the rest of the film.
Anna – Abbie Cornish’s Role
Cornish plays a conflicted DEA agent which shifts focus away from the male centric conflict. Anna helps round out the story’s emotional elements by linking together parts of Cain’s past, turning into alterations of image unstead mysteries of the future he cannot make so easily. Anna sheds the most gentle yet bold light on the action driven moments which, more often than not, feature overwhelming amounts of male energy.
Nick Nolte as Ethan McCoy
Nolte Narcissistically accompanies an older, weathered agent or contact who doles out exposition and context as needed. Although Nolte’s role is minimal, as it mostly comprises of cameo scenes, everyone knows him for his signature gruffness and he certainly does not pretend to add nuance and credibility to a character who, albeit helps orient the viewer, is a skeletal figure.
Omar Chaparro as Eddie
Chaparro’s interpretation brilliantly captures the darkly humorous side to his character of a cartle leader and makes him diabolical. As one of the primary antagonists, Chaparro heightens the stakes of the narrative by helping Cain race against time to unlock the information while trying to survive.
Direction and Cinematography
Hollywood is familiar with Director Sam Macaroni for his background in orchestrating action scenes and masterfully editing visual effects. He brought that same gritty, energetic style to action thriller Blackout. The action is explosive, violent, fast paced, and unremittingly depends on close combat and shootouts. Unlike many modern directors, Macaroni does not restrain himself in needlessly over-injecting graphic violence but he does stick to the story’s tone.
The hospital setting is masterfully used. The building becomes a maze-like battleground because of narrow hallways, locked doors, multiple floors, and dim lighting. It increases the tension, adding a feeling of claustrophobia to the character confrontations.
Emotionally mute in the film is expressed with subdued vibrancy of colors on the screen— washed out fluorescents, grey, and light blue. These colors set the stage for any sense of bleakness and bath the film in an aura of mystery. The filming techniques used greatly benefited the story, as they both trapped the viewer in the story alongside the character.
Themes And Tone
Blackout explores themes that may be familiar to others, such as betrayal, surviving and redemption. Amnesia serves both as a plot device and a metaphor, for Cain who is mentally wrestling as memories begin to surface—this man is fighting memories.
Subtlety, harsh morals can be seen as well. For instance, the question of whether it is feasible to flee from one’s past and if given the luxury of a second chance isn’t running away from the back, will, he emerge with a refined self? The protagonist’s journey, despite the lack of heavy contemplation throughout unravels gives the themes more depth.
In comparision to the previous themes, Blackout being on the serious side sounds remarkably gritty. Eyes on the cartel always add in some levity and irony, allowing the film to gain a layer of dark humor, whilst helping it release some tension.
Reception and Impact
Blackout did attract some attention after its initial release, but it did not have a large budget or an expansive film setting. The streaming services seemed to receive the film much more positively than critics. Blackout was pigeonholed as an explosion filled cliché with critiquers citing lack of originality besides Duhamel’s performance. Other viewers argued the film resembled a hybrid of The Bourne Identity and Die Hard, containing some of the more popular aspects but lacking in creativity.
It is odd that a film receiving harsh critiques for lack of innovation and creativity still breeds sequels. I can only assume it is the result of popular demand as the film franchise must’ve catered to a specific niche due to a lax marketing budget.
Conclusion
Impact doesn’t concern Blackout, the buck stopped at being a fast paced action thriller set to binge on a couch simply to enjoy some visceral cinema. If anything, it is commendable for fulfilling that goal during a somewhat tighter timeframe than most.
Blackout will give you a fast paced, action filled story with an amnesiac protagonist who is attempting to make sense of his life in the middle of a shootout. The film contains many unexpected turns and, although it doesn’t revolutionize the genre, it remains faithful to the action-shooters while still injecting enough innovation to make it a worthwhile experience.
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