Knuckledust
Samuel GoldwynImagine The Raid, but instead of Iko Uwais fighting his way through a regular old tower block, it’s a tough Irish bloke who finds himself having to brawl through a version of the seven circles of Hell. That is the base idea of Knuckledust, the sophomore directorial feature film from actor James Kermack, and it’s certainly a plot line that delivers an instant hook. Unfortunately, several limitations result in Kermack falling several leagues short of what could have been an excellent entry into the action genre.
Knuckledust is a brutally run underground fight club and, after a harrowing phone call, the police are called in to investigate only to find six floors of corpses. Hard Eight – the aforementioned Irish bloke, a promising lead turn by Moe Dunford – is seemingly the only survivor and is taken in for questioning. From this point, the film focuses on an interrogation of Hard Eight from Kate Dickie’s police chief, Katherine Keaton, with Hard Eight’s side of the story being told mostly through the use of various flashback devices – including a nightmarishly beautiful Tintin-esque animated sequence.
As it turns out, Hard Eight was an unwilling fighter and sought revenge on the people who put him through these horrific brawls by taking them out, floor by floor. He does seem a genuine guy who has been pushed to his utmost edge, and Dunford makes it very easy to get behind him as a protagonist.
The concept itself certainly has the potential of being an interesting idea to commit to screen, but film adaptations or interpretations of the seven circles of Hell have typically fallen short and Knuckledust is no exception, instead feeling like many missed opportunities. The biggest aspect that detracts from the most engaging part of the story is the fact that more time is spent in the police station, with a host of annoying characters – Dave Bibby’s Hooper is the biggest culprit here – rather than spending it seeing Hard Eight face trial after trial in Club Knuckledust.
Kermack channels his inner Guy Ritchie here, but fails, for the most part, to find the right balance between good action and good comedy. The biggest exception is the movie’s standout scene: a homage to the iconic Oldboy hallway fight, with the addition here of people in gimp suits and dildo nunchucks. The ridiculousness of the situation is cause enough to find humour, but paired with the inclusion of nicely choreographed action, it manages to be the biggest threat Hard Eight faces throughout. This sequence acts as the perfect blend of tone, but serves to highlight that this template was disregarded for the rest of the movie.
There’s a lot of ambition here in Knuckledust. The storyline is intriguing, but it is bogged down with attempts at clever twists and too many characters – Phil Davis is great in a role in which he has less than five minutes of screen time. Rather than focusing on one streamlined idea, Kermack instead constantly tries to outsmart the audience and loses a lot of entertainment value along the way.