Unhappy families, goes the adage, are unhappy in a thousand different ways. Viewers can easily find a thousand different ways to be unhappy with BODY COUNT, as the sordid mix of domestic discord and action makes this straight-to-video item qualify as DIE HARD in a dysfunctional household.
Susanne Barrison (Alyssa Milano) accompanies fiance Daniel (Justin Theroux) to his wealthy family's fancy estate for a New Years reunion. It's an uncomfortable situation; patriarch Jack (Ron Harper) views English-teacher Daniel and his boozy brother Justin (Nicholas Walker) as wastrels, failing to
carry on the family art dealership. Jack mourns his more industrious, favorite son John, recently killed while rock climbing, and threatens to disown Daniel if he doesn't become a businessman. Susanne and Daniel are making love in a basement studio when the mansion is crashed by a trio of gunmen,
who cut phone lines, pitilessly shoot down servants and bluebloods alike, and start loading their truck with the estate's valuable paintings. From their hiding places Susanne and Daniel overhear thug Jim (Ice T) mentioning that the whole massacre and robbery was a contract job, commissioned by
Justin. When one of the home invaders finds Susanne, Daniel kills the man, then the other two. Jim is particularly caught off guard, since he knew Daniel as "Justin," the client paying him to murder and loot. Daniel has engineered the foul scheme to rid himself of his troublesome relatives, cash
in their fortune, and eliminate his accomplices, with Susanne as a witness who can pin it all on Justin. Susanne realizes the truth--partially because Daniel flips out, rants about murder as an art form, and confesses to having killed John in the first place. Susanne shoots him dead and drives off
with fellow survivor Justin.
Though directed with a noirish gloss by B-grade thriller specialist Kurt Voss (HORSEPLAYER), BODY COUNT fatally fails to convince on either side of its agenda. The monied, moody, art-mongering family are painted with a bit too broad a brush to be believable, and there's heavy-handed symbolism in
Daniel's incomplete basement mural of Sodom and Gommorah that prefigures the clan's apocalyptic end. Then the plot becomes a vest-pocket DIE HARD (1988), with endless scenes of the protagonists creeping around wide-eyed in the shadows. The initial sense of claustrophobic terror is mitigated by
typical action cliches, as Susanne's crotch kicks disable towering assailants, and Daniel's complicity is a terribly foregone conclusion. The plot seems to set up some sort of racial dichotomy, comparing the aristocrat's silent, docile, and nameless black servants with the aggressive, colorful
marauders Ice T and Tommy "Tiny" Lister, but nothing much develops.
It may be germane that rapper-actor Ice T fronted a band also named Body Count. Turning to another sort of body, actress Milano earned notoriety as a wholesome juvenile performer (TV's "Who's the Boss?") who graduated to very sexy adult roles. She stays relatively demure here, in addition to
executive-producing. (Violence, adult situations, profanity, sexual situations, substance abuse.) leave a comment
