Til Death Do Us Part opens exclusively in theaters nationwide on August 4 from Cineverse.
Returning to the typically familiar and fun assassin subgenre of action films is Til Death Do Us Part, the newest from director Timothy Woodward Jr., and starring Natalie Burn who, while racking up credits in small and supporting roles for some projects, has admirably managed to carve her own space in the niche as both star and producer. For this, Til Death Do Us Part also reunites both star and director following “Studio City,” with a script by oft writing duo Chad Law and Shane Dax Taylor in their latest pairing after Isaac Florentine’s Close Range and Taylor’s third directorial outing, Isolation.
Joining Burn is actor Ser’Darius Blain along with a cast adding to the scrimmages of violence to the mix with Cam Cigandet, Orlando Bloom, Pancho Moler and Neb Chupin, all paving the way for the story of a wedding night that’s about to be anything but. To that extent, the film treks back and forth between two different timelines, at the forefront of which we already meet Bride (Burn), already having lingering second thoughts before retreating from the wedding hall where she would have been married to the hopeful Groom (Blain) in front of all their witnesses and friends. Clearly unable to go through with the wedding for reasons that aren’t revealed until much later in the film, the Bride escapes to her late father’s home in hopes of some much-needed alone-time.
Unfortunately, the Groom isn’t so understanding and leaves it to his Best Man (Cigandet) his wily crack team of wedding bros to find her and bring her to him – that is, if they can do so alive; The twist here is that they are all part of a clandestined organization of assassins called the “University,” and long story short, because the Bride “knows too much,” the only option she’s being allowed at this point is to go through with the marriage – something the Bride is, in no uncertain terms, set dead against. With her father’s sprawling two-story home now under-siege by the Best Man and his ragtag sextet of Groomsmen (Jones, Moler, and Chupin; and action actors Alan Silva, D.Y. Sao and Sam Lee Herring) with only their wit and hand-to-hand skills and anything else within arms’ reach at their disposal, the Bride has no choice but to meet the Best Man and the itchy Groomsmen head-on from one contained death match to the next.
That’s about the thick of it for Til Death Do Us Part, as the more crucial arc of the story promptly carried by Cigandet’s eccentric Best Man who spents a good deal of the film twinkle-toeing to background music between rooms while hunting for the Bride. Whenever he’s not doing that, he’s busy butting heads with Jones’ character and monologuing about his Best Man speech to the would-be Bride and Groom, or how much he cares about the Groom’s feelings, at least until he feels its time to throw discretion out of the window. Moler and Chupin take up the little person/big person end of the film’s comic relief as paired-up assassins struggling to navigate their way into the home to nab the Bride. There’s no ignoring the one moment in the film during which she manages to slip away from them despite being mere inches from her.
Much to my chargrin, there isn’t much else to extrapolate from the film’s toiling at comedy, Despite its core intent on elevating the film’s edgy tone and delivery as an overt action horror rife with its share of gruesome kills and melodrama, and between Cigandet’s best efforts and that of the rest of the cast with Natalie crossing paths with each villain, the humor falls too flat to recover from for most of the way. Leaving it to the sole performances at times to try and leave the desired mark, along with the film’s requisite fight action and stunts coordinated by Arnold Chon. The good news here is that the action is awesome to look at, with violence and gore tweaked well enough to please viewers looking to see someone smashed in the face with a shovel, sliced through with a chainsaw, or stabbed in the dick Johnny Cage style.
Where the film’s culmination lies is in the aftermath of its secondary arc, where the would-be fiancées vacationing in Puerto Rico cross paths with another peculiar couple, whose backstory serves as the inflection point for a key reveal that precedes our mainstory as to the Bride’s latest fight for her life. Both stories combined and Burn showcasing some of her best on screen aside, Til Death Do Us Part takes a chunk of time to really get moving within the first hour, and provided you’re not taken out of the film by its abortive comedic banter, overtalkative expositioning and drab energy, maybe there’s a passable final girl survival thriller beneath it all. Personally, I just couldn’t see it.
