End Game

There is nothing interesting on at the cinema this week. The Box sees Donnie Darko director Richard Kelly stretch a twenty-minute Twilight Zone story into needless proportions. The Descent Part 2 is a retread that will surely spoil The Descent’s tag of being the best horror film of the decade. And Me and Orson Welles is a grammatically awkward tale starring Zac Efron. I’m not watching anything with Zac Efron in.

So let’s talk about a bizarre straight to DVD release called End Game, starring professional wrestler Kurt Angle. Not many wrestlers translate into Hollywood well. Yes, they can manipulate a crowd perfectly, but this is achieved through over-acting and having the emotion of The Incredible Hulk mixed with a plank of wood. The only wrestlers to make a successful transition into film are The Rock and, possibly, Steve Austin. Even Hulk Hogan failed miserably. Santa with Muscles, anyone?

Kurt Angle, in this instance, is spectacularly bad in a spectacularly bad film. His performance is exactly like a one-tone wrestling villain/heel when he is required to assume several different disguises as a serial killer stalking his next victim. That the film expects us to be shocked when it’s revealed Angle dressed as a detective to infiltrate the victim’s household is laughable. The blame for this though is squarely down to the acting.

Amazingly, Angle is by far the best actor of the three main characters. The protagonist Detective Bishop (played by Sam Nicotero, I think) delivers his lines as if he is in a children’s nativity play. Meanwhile, Jenna Morasca – former Survivor contestant and TNA “money mark” (© Kevin Nash 2009) – is easily the worst actress in the history of non-pornographic film. Not only is she out acted by several inanimate objects such as the walls in her apartment, she literally doesn’t react when told the news that her best friend had just been buggered to death by Kurt Angle. If this film had a wider distribution, her performance would go down in infamy.

End Game is low budget cinema at its ugliest. It’s not the worst film I’ve ever seen, but possibly one of the most unintentionally funny. And this isn’t Kurt Angle’s last foray into cinema either. 2010 sees River of Darkness, a horror film starring himself, Kevin Nash, former WWF and WCW champion Psycho Sid, and Detective Bishop. I, for one, can’t wait. Well, at least it’ll be better than the upcoming The Marine 2 film starring Ted Dibiase Jr anyway.