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I was curious to see what Dave Bautista’s latest action-thriller Trap House had to offer after seeing the decent looking enough trailer and determining that this wasn’t your normal guns blazing actioner. Bautista is clearly a force of nature in cinema, and he has parlayed a blockbuster wrestling career into a legit, standout Hollywood success story. The movie had a limited theatrical run that I, of course, missed but I finally was able to catch up with it on Digital over the weekend. It is true that the film delivers some brutal R-Rated firepower but at the same time the pic has some trouble identifying what it really wants to be. I must applaud the filmmakers here including director Michael Dowse and co-writer Gary Scott Thompson (who is also responsible for the Fast and the Furious franchise) as they attempt to step out of the comfort zone of usual cartel laced action-thrillers.
The film is a cross between Sicario and a more modern style The Goonies as it borders on teen adventure mixed with hard hitting shootouts and ample killings. This presents the main problem as the film suffers from a severe case of personality disorder leading to a mostly satisfying viewing experience. I felt that the movie could have punched it home harder in the long run but dammit if it wasn’t for Bautista, this film probably would have disappeared more into obscurity.
Trap House centers on the children of elite DEA agents who must remain undercover so they and their loved ones will not fall into harm’s way due to the unsavory type of people these law enforcers must battle on a deadly basis. When the father of one of the kids dies in a raid on a stash house, the family is left in dire straits due to the fact that the DEA pretty much sucks at compensating when one of theirs goes down. This tight group of high schoolers led by Cody (Jack Champion who was in Avatar 2), whose father happens to be Bautista’s character named Ray, make the faithful decision to steal from one of the cartel’s trap houses which resides in the usual quiet part of the El Paso, Texas neighborhood they live in. Before you can say Scooby Gang, the kids, utilizing the tactics and gear that their perspective parents are experts at, decide to employ non-lethal measures as they somehow manage to pull off the heist to help their friend.
This leads the cartel led by the sibling duo Benito and Natalia played by Tony Dalton and Kate del Castillo respectively to take the appropriate course of action to identify and then eliminate the problem. What transpires is a film with a running time that is filled with both teen hijinks meshed with ferocious and violent shootouts galore. Yes, audiences will basically have to majorly suspend disbelief here and while it tries to offer something off the beat and path, it stumbles across the finish line.
Now this tonal shift which is present during the entire film could have hampered the results completely, but Dowse does manage to admirably steer the ship resulting in some decent thrills and kills. On one hand, I was torn because I was left thinking of what might have been if they had chosen to go full on crime thriller. We could have had Bautista leading the charge and busting heads and bones for 100 minutes, but having the star take a backseat somewhat to the kids’ story does offer up a little something different. But what could have been was what I was left with when the end credits rolled.
The strength in Trap House is Bautista who could have played Ray as the standard cheese filled action hero but here, he is grounded and real. Bautista delivers a performance that is honest and genuine and he is essentially just a single dad looking to raise his son while fighting the worst of the worse on a daily basis. Bautista’s performance basically reels in the over-the-top theatrics at play here and when Ray realizes just what is going on, he sticks the landing on the execution. There is also plenty of moments where Bautista gets to unleash the animal and he gets to execute some gnarly kills along the way. Always a plus for a film like this and those fans waiting for a f-yeah moment.
The supporting cast is solid as well with Bobby Cannavale taking on the very standard role of Ray’s partner and friend and the two generate some rousing chemistry that I wanted to see more of. Again, if it had played it straight and just served up these two gunning for the bad guys, I would have been perfectly fine with it. Sure, it would have been more formulaic, but I am a sucker for those kinds of flicks.
Jack Champion as Cody also does service to the plot. He could have been the usual annoying teenage son, but Champion plays it with a little heart and grit making you care about him and his friends when they concoct such an asinine plot. Bautista and Champion get to have some decent quitter moments together which helps propel the sympathetic side to the story.
Besides Cody and Denni who is played well by Sophia Willis, the other kids in the group including Yvonne (Whitney Peak) and Kyle (Zaire Adams) are unfortunately underdeveloped. We do get to spend a little bit of more time with them, but we don’t get any real backstory to them besides the fact that their parents are also a part of this DEA task force. The villains who I mentioned before which are played by Tony Dalton and Kate del Castillo are one note as well and really aren’t all that menacing for cartel leadership. Castillo is given more to do but Dalton ultimately just fills the screen with nothing really to offer in the way of being menacing.
There is also the subplot of Cody falling for the new girl in town and at his school named Teresa (Inde Navarrette) and this serves as nothing more than a reason to offer up a twist that I spotted early on. To say it was forced would be an understatement but again I digress as it didn’t kill anything for me. Navarrette does have a little fun in the later stages of the movie but again try harder next time guys.
Like I stated before, the movie does give fans enough of the bloody stuff with a few rousing firefights and a climax that features the desired amount of cartel members buying the farm. It’s quick and forgettable to a degree but while watching it, viewers should be entertained enough seeing some decent blood spray fill the air. Again, the action suffers from the tonal changes and just as soon as it gets going, it’s back to El Paso 90210. The tagline for the movie says it isn’t a raid, it’s a reckoning but at the end of the day we got the raid but not the reckoning.
All in all, Trap House is ultimately let down by the unneeded combo of teen angst merged with brutal cartel action. Some of the characters are fleshed out enough but it is few and far between. The movie succeeds on certain levels and is weighed down by its faltering narrative, and I’m still wondering why the conclusion was left open. The film offers a hint that there will be a Trap House 2 and while I heard rumblings of the filmmakers wanting this to become a franchise, I believe that will never happen as the movie was far from successful, so we are left with a what happens next motif. It’s a shame really because maybe with a follow up. they could have fixed some of the issues I had with it. It does have Bautista doing Bautista things so there is that. I just wanted less Goonies and more Sicario.
VERDICT: 3 Out of 5 Stars
Trap House could have went full throttle but instead it couldn’t figure out just what it wanted to be. Dave Bautista continues to shine in both the action and drama departments but at the end of the day, the suspend disbelief plot and shifts in tone hampered the final product.
