Jolt
Tanya Wexler's Jolt is – all things considered – an utter disaster. It is a conventional and emotionally flat dud that fails to incite any emotional reaction or immersion aside from wanting to turn it off immediately.
What makes Jolt so frustrating is that – with a fairly competent director in Wexler, an unsung action star with Beckinsale in the lead role, and a mysterious plot at the center of this narrative – it manages to waste seismic talent in every direction. First and foremost, the aesthetic and production design is as flat and uninspiring as they come – a film made in 2021 that would be more comfortable shown in 2004. Cheap does not quite cut it here as a descriptive. The sheer lack of vision to build what is disposed of as a knock-off dystopian world is consistently made redundant, as Jolt makes no means to explore or even acknowledge something more extensive than what is conventionally put on screen.
In turn, a lack in care of the setting should have no real issue if the characters presented are finely tuned and interesting. This is yet another issue that Jolt presents: it is shallow and utterly flat in character depth and story immersion, which is either told in flashback montage or not at all. Character moments of humour are forced and unwittingly come across more stupid than the intent of comical form. Leading to excessive comic relief characters, unfortunately, making this even more of a struggle to sit through than it already is.
This all comes down to the screenplay from Scott Wascha. The writer’s singular entity into the world of produced screenplays, this is a story with forced, relentlessly unnecessary moments that evoke a sense of needing to be liked. This theme is constant and suffocating to the point of destruction. Laverne Cox is sadly the biggest casualty here in this context. A character written in such an unnatural and quirky way that ultimately irritates to a point that the audience begin to reject the proceedings. Bobby Cannavale does not get off lightly either with a forcefully stupid and relentless character, which is only produced to give the film slack momentum and reactionary sequences of forced character depth and interaction. Made worse is that the film continualsy retorts back to his and Cox’s duo, a feat that even just once would be too excessive to witness.
But what about the saving grace? Sadly, for all her unsung action stardom in the likes of Underworld, Kate Beckinsale is given so little here to produce regarding character; it is verging on tragedy to have the actress perform at this standard. Granted, Underworld: Blood Wars is nothing to really go off but the talents are still present, Love + Friendship would be a testament to that star quality that actress has up her sleeve. Nevertheless, what is orchestrated here, again, in terms of the screenplay and depth is ironically laughable and a deterrent to even sit this through to the end.
To further add heartbreak to proceedings – aside from the weak production design, the rudimentary and flat narrative, and often excessive and tragic screenplay – is that even at its most simplistic form of being just an entertaining action film, Jolt is a failure. The film editing alone from a trio of staff is abysmal. The set pieces are uninspired and rudimentary, with no life or interest in doing anything remotely unique for its audience to be entertained. Granted, it can just about manage to evoke the same contextual ADHD of Beckinsale's character thematically, but it is a far cry from being impressive.
All in all, Jolt falls nothing short of being a disaster. A tonal imbalance, poorly produced spectacle with little heart and soul that feels out of place in this contemporary action genre when compared to Atomic Blonde, Crank, and John Wick, and sadder when it would fall short and underwhelm within bygone decades.
