Review: BUNKER: PROJECT 12 Should Probably Stay Inside It
I don’t really pay attention to IMDb ratings but I guess figures like that actually have some merit, specifically with regard to Jaime Falero’s second feature and Vision Films’ latest release, Bunker: Project 12. Films like this aren’t worth much on the film market front unless they have a huge star to help make a name for it and lo and behold, that man turns out to be actor Eric Roberts who never not steals the show no matter which scene he’s in, and really it makes a lot of the crummy low-budget films he’s in all the more frustrating.
Front and center is a cast that lists Tony Corvillo, Joaquin Sanchez, Timothy Gibbs, Natasha Alam and James Cosmo for the story of a group of mercenaries hired by an arms industrialist to track down a long lost underground soviet bunker with the help of their captive, an aging military scientist marked for death by Russian agents on a mission to keep the program dead for good. What ensues is a litany of betrayal, dead bodies and questions of loyalty compounded by the awakening of an army of reanimated, autonomous and hard-to-kill soviet supersoldiers and a similarly able A.I. prototype.
I couldn’t really bear the first half hour of this movie – By that point, it was then that things finally got interesting with the story, although a lot that could have been done to improve the energy and vigor of the dialogue and script just isn’t done. Most of the acting is decent with a feasible display of fight scenery when it happens, but that sort of action is few and far between and leaves much to be desired for the rest of the film as we’re forcefed boring scenes of watching our protagonists empty whole clips into the supersoldier characters.
The roles played by our human cast, particularly by that of Sanchez, Gibbs, Alam and Cosmo turn up plenty of interest from time to time as interwoven plots begin to unravel. However, and again, the script, which veers a little on the racially tinged end of things with at least two of our characters throughout the film, does little to nothing to sustain interest; I found myself repeatedly tuning in and out for most of the film and having to painstakingly backtrack for this review just to collect what data I could use to produce a thought, no matter how many sighs it took.
Sanchez leaves off as particularly the most charming and worth rooting for among our protagonists as the story unfolds – one that’s jam-packed with some of the most inglorious and unceremonious deaths I’ve seen in any film. At least one character who I thought should have somehow made it ends up dead with at least two survivors by the film’s exit.
Roberts, frankly being the strongest actor in the movie, carries as much as he can with what he has per the film’s twists and turns and it can be pretty gravitating. And that’s it, really. The whole central concept of our characters battling these revived supersoldiers is left wasted with a plot much more hinged on the film’s principal cast, and while I don’t blame Falero for doing so – and mainly since all the supersoldiers sequences can pretty much be summed up as acting in front of the occasional green screen, flamethrowing and walking toward gunfire – it still feels like a total waste.
Bunker: Project 12, if nothing else, serves as an extra-long acting demo for Roberts who gets maybe 10 or more minutes in for drama. All else is rendered either moot or a total chore to watch, though if there’s at least one or two other things to take away from it, it’s the fight scene between Sanchez and Gibbs which is probably the most badass moment of the film in its entirety; If Bunker: Project 12 were written differently a premise leading up to this fight scene, it would probably be a better film all around than we have now…and also starring Eric Roberts!
Bunker: Project 12 is now available on Digital and DVD from Vision Films. I didn’t care too much for this movie, but if you do, click the image above to buy or rent a copy today. Or just click here to watch Battle Drone. Better movie.
Native New Yorker. Been writing for a long time now, and I enjoy what I do. Be nice to me!