![]() While he clearly believes he can talk his way out of trouble, his natural antipathy toward the abrasive Joaquim occasionally gets the better of him. Guy alternately tries to trick his captors into releasing his wife and to convince them that he's working in everyone's best interests, setting up a real estate deal (aided by unique Costa Rican property laws) that will make them all rich. While Solange and Joaquim keep a close eye on Guy (particularly close - intimate even - on Solange's part), Nicky drags Corrine to a ratty hut in the middle of a vast banana plantation. The whole group checks into a posh resort, whereupon the trio makes their move. These three plan to kidnap poor Corrine in order to keep Guy from ripping off a large sum of money they'd earlier entrusted to him. They're being followed by the coolly sarcastic Solange ( Michelle Jones), who also serves as our narrator her hot-tempered lover, Joaquim ( Keith Brunsmann) and his seemingly dim, indolent brother, Nicky (Ryan Barton-Grimley). He's going for shady business reasons, and rarely puts down his cell phone. Unfortunately, for the most part, the filmmakers seem hell-bent on eliding fascinating local detail in order to keep their rickety roller-coaster plot on track.Fast-talking Guy ( Thomas Scott) is taking his mentally fragile wife, Corrine (Danielle Bisutti), to beautiful Costa Rica. Despite all the sex, gunplay, and self-conscious tough guy (and girl) posturing, one of the most interesting sequences in the film is basically a cutaway to an ordinary workday on a banana plantation. The gorgeous Costa Rican setting and the percolating salsa score (by Walter Flores) promise more site-specific interest than the film delivers. ![]() Solange's intrusive voice-over is too clever by half. Performances are adequate, though Owen Wilson imitator Ryan Barton-Grimley is a standout, and the lovely Michelle Jones makes would-be femme fatale Solange a more interesting character than the writing deserves. Screenwriter Livia Linden and her co-director, Percy Angress, get by mostly on tone (nicely sardonic) and apparent unbridled enthusiasm. But it's not as though anything else going on in the movie makes much sense. The action scene in question, in which one character (or rather, a poorly constructed dummy meant to represent the character) hangs, for what seems an eternity, from a flying helicopter, is just the sort of thing that low-budget thriller makers need to write out of their scripts. ![]() ![]() ![]() TropiX is a rough-hewn little indie, with a few appealing performances and some clever dialogue helping to compensate for sloppy plotting, one embarrassingly bare-bones action set piece, and the fact that the filmmakers don't have much to say. ![]()
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