8. Brake
Stephen Dorff seemed all set for a comeback after starring in Sofia Coppola’s Somewhere in 2010 but apart from a supporting role in last year’s Immortals this hasn’t really come to fruition.
Brake is seemingly the latest in a long line of straight to DVD thriller’s riffing on Buried or Devil but truthfully Brake is much more like 24 or Speed than those claustrophobic sweaty tension films. Dorff plays Jeremy, a secret service agent with a gambling problem who awakes to find himself in a large glass tank in the boot of a vehicle hurtling through a city. Jeremy is repeatedly asked the location of something he can’t reveal and tortured with bees or the cries of another kidnap victim and the fate of his estranged wife.
We are drip fed information about what is happening outside and the stakes are repeatedly raised as we realise Jeremy is in the middle of another 9/11 level attack on the US. Twists and turns occur and although we remain in the trunk of this vehicle it feels more exciting than that the whole way through. The ending may not be as clever or subversive as it thinks it is but Brake is way way above your usual bottom shelf action movie and genuinely gripping throughout.
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