Movie Review: ‘Bent’ Is Good Enough To Deserve A Sequel

Review by James Lindorf

When a drug bust goes wrong, and an undercover cop is gunned down, New Orleans police officer Danny Gallagher (Karl Urban, Lord of the Rings) finds himself behind bars. Now back on the streets and hated by those he once considered friends, Danny is on the hunt for the truth behind what happened that night. His quest for justice leads him to the car-bomb murder of a government official’s wife. As Gallagher learns the woman’s secret lover was a federal agent (Sofia Vergara, Modern Family), he finds himself under fire…but from who? Cops out for retribution, a vengeful drug lord, the CIA, or someone even more ruthless? This Lionsgate production, also starring Grace Byers (Empire) and Andy Garcia (Ocean’s Eleven), directed by Bobby Moresco (Producer of Crash and Million Dollar Baby), will be available in theaters and on demand March 9th.

The strength of this film lies in its performances, which is great considering the film has a very small cast. If even one of them was bad, it could ruin the movie. Karl Urban is excellent, as always. I have seen him in dozens of things, and his performance as Danny felt mostly unique. Danny comes across as a mix between Urban’s past characters, Dredd and Bones. He is gruff and, on a mission, but he isn’t above a snarky comeback. Andy Garcia has a limited role but owns every scene he is in, making me wish he had more to do with the main story. The performances of Urban and Garcia were typical of them, but the person who really surprised me was Sofia Vergara. I have been a vocal critic of her caricature of a performance on Modern Family as poorly acted and annoying, however, after watching her performance in Bent I am willing to give more properties featuring her a chance. There is also some good action and practical effects in this movie. Danny may have the highest pain tolerance I have ever seen.

The film’s weakness is a fairly typical one for adaptations. In this case, they tried to adapt a 216-page book into a 96-minute movie and it wasn’t enough time. There are too many storylines that converge into one without Danny having a significant amount of time to investigate and tie the loose ends together. Nothing that happens is out of deep left field, but some answers come too easily to be satisfying. Instead of going from A to B to C, it feels like Danny goes from A to D to F. Thankfully it is down a fairly logical, if not somewhat familiar, path. The script needed to be trimmed or the running time needed to be increased. Since a longer movie requires more money, I think they should have tightened the script and focused on a few key elements.

I hope this movie does well enough to get a sequel. JP O’Donnell, who wrote the book that inspired this movie, has one more Gallagher novel currently available that could be adapted. I think by increasing the running time, or maybe removing a plot line or two to clean up the story, we could be looking at a great and long-running series with Karl Urban at the front.

In select theaters and on demand March 9 from Lionsgate.