I kept wondering at first when I last heard the name of Danielle C. Ryan upon learning about her new film, Double Threat. It definitely wasn’t The Cat In The Hat, so I looked her up briefly and noticed her screen credit in John Lyde’s 2016 prison thriller, Riot, with Matthew Reese and Dolph Lundgren. It was a film I certainly enjoyed in part due to Ryan’s performance caliber from acting and action standpoints, so looking at her latest joint from director Shane Stanley, her return to the genre makes clear sense.
Going forward though, what’s a little less understandable is the level of mediocrity the script undertakes at times. We meet Natasha (Ryan), a woman who apparently has a little more bark in her bite than most people realize, including and especially Jimmy (Matthew Lawrence), an unsuspecting family law forensic accountant en route to release his late brother’s ashes at a remote river location. After a short mini-mart stop that goes bust when Natasha, working behind the counter, single-handedly takes out two armed killers, it’s not long before she accomodates Jimmy’s truck just as he’s driving away from the crime scene, with Natasha riding shotgun and fending off more armed gunmen.
What ensues in Double Threat is a road adventure in which a reluctant Jimmy agrees to help Natasha in her current crisis, learning a little more about her and her seemingly vague past in relation to the mob family now hunting her down for reasons involving more than half a million dollars in stolen cash. And of course, he finds himself falling for her, which imaginably might come as a challenge seeing as the boss’s lovelorn son, Ellis (Kevin Joy), might have something to say about it.
A serviceable action adventure thriller for much of the journey, Double Threat often meanders into uninteresting chitchat and exasperating romcom territory at times, the latter which makes it easy for the desensitized to mistake as workable comedy and chemistry. Save for what actress Dawn Olivieri (“The Umbrella Academy”, “House Of Lies”, Den Of Thieves) brings to the table in the role of a mob enforcer named “Ask”, none of the jokes are funny, and really the only thing worth getting behind about our lead heroine is the backstory that foundates who she is now, in accordance with her psychosis.
Gladly the action is as decent as one could ask for with a low-budget indepenent thriller, and a good deal of the credit goes to the fight and stunts assembled by stunt coordinator Ronald “Doc” Duhame. Fight scenery is clearly one of Ryan’s best strengths are in this film as she makes the best out of what she’s given and does an ample job with it. I just wish we got a film where the dialog driving scenes didn’t look like they were shot in front of a green screen. There’s also a gag where Natasha beats up two heavily-armed goons, and the handgun that Jimmy spends more than three minutes trying to use suddenly misfires and he doesn’t bat an eyelash, which is funny because nearly a half-hour earlier he’s clearly panicked while driving after Natasha asks him to hold a shotgun and he can’t hand it back fast enough. Nerves of steel, that one.
With all this in mind, I’m not completely unapproving of Double Threat as it stands to further showcase Ryan as a screen talent who deserves bigger and better. Plus, it’s not like some of these films don’t deserve a curve or two, and for that matter, I recommend checking it out once it’s made available this Friday, and if you haven’t already, seek out Riot for the better end of a double header on a quiet Sunday, and let’s hope Ryan’s prospects only continue to grow after this. Ryan’s a sight to see with the right people behind the camera and if she can be paired with folks like Samantha Win or Amy Johnston, or even Into The Badlands’ Ally Ioannides at some point, even better.
Double Threat is now available on VOD from VMI Worldwide.