Review: The Belko Experiment

It appears that this week is the week of Corporate evil pictures. After watching Joe Lynch's "Mayhem" , I have opted to follow it up with Greg McLean's "The Belko Experiment".

While Mayhem's office-gone-homicidal plot served as a solid "fuck you" to the Corporate Man, Belko seems to have adopted a Corporate mentality, even amongst those who are technically considered victims. 

It can't be easy writing a script following so many characters, and try to make them compelling in their own way. Screenwriter James Gunn was up to the task and serves up an office full of unique characters, both likable and unlikable.

The plot is your standard meta survival hook. A company full of innocent Americans working in Colombia are sealed inside the office, and ordered to kill each other.

The cast is a bonefide who's who of stellar character actors. Such names as Tony Goldwyn, John C McGinley, Michael Rooker, David Dastmalchian, Brent Sexton, Gregg Henry, and Rusty Scwimmer help round out the supporting cast. John Gallagher Jr demonstrates here the  chops to be a great leading man. Adria Ajorna also has a stellar arc playing double duty, as the concerned leading lady love interest, and a ruthless realist.

It troubles me how effortlessly Goldwyn and McGinley occupy their absolute shitbag roles in this. It's chilling. And is Goldwyn forever the shithead businessman in "Ghost", or is it just me? That's not a dig at all, he's just brilliant at playing white collar sorts with a massive dark side.

My issue with this movie is how dour the tone is. The beauty of similar movies, Battle Royale for instance, is that while the situation is the same, enough room is left for a little bin of fun, be it at the absurdity of the story, or through a few over the top wildcard characters. 

Belko does have its share of wildcards, but things are always too down note to keep the viewer from having a blast with the chaos. Even when righteous moments do happen, they seem to be more akin to dark footnotes, and never really savored. 

The few laughs the film has come in the form of the great soundtrack, which always seems to find the most inappropriate song imaginable for the situation. 

And while it should be noted that it's gospel in these types of movies to lose a few loveable characters early on, this one really suffered with losing 2 incredibly versatile actors (Dastmalchian and Rooker) so damned early. I really wanted to see more of the father/son vibe they brought to their roles.

In the end, TBE is mostly a by-the-numbers survival tale, though it is peppered with a few ballsy moves along the way. Some moments are so unflinchingly cold blooded, it's rather impressive.

While Mayhem burned down the system from within, and peeled off some optimism, Belko succumbed to the system, giving the viewer a swift kick to the throat, and forced us to do an exit interview. 

Both of these different ends of the evil Corporate spectrum paint a pretty vivid picture of the vinyl-walled hellscape we have created for ourselves. Have you seen my pen?