I'll admit it, I thought that Landmine Goes Click was a movie with a title referring to some major metaphor, a situation ready to explode once people placed themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time. Nope, my bad, it's a film in which someone actually steps on a landmine, and that is a pivotal part of the plot.
Sterling Knight plays Chris, a young man travelling with Alicia (Spencer Locke) and her boyfriend, Daniel (Dean Geyer), through some isolated countryside. Unfortunately for Chris and Alicia, Daniel knows that the two of them have slept together. So he arranges for Chris to step on a landmine. He then leaves Chris and Alicia alone, helpless, and waiting for what seems like an inevitable, deadly, explosion. Things start to look up when a figure, Ilya (Kote Tolordava), appears, but it soon becomes apparent that Ilya may not be interested in helping them.
With a screenplay by Adrian Colussi, who worked on the story with Lloyd S. Wagner and director Levan Bakhia, this is a dark and twisted revenge thriller that gets things wrong from the very start, makes things worse through the middle section, and somehow ends just as badly as it all begins.
Mired in misogyny and pointlessness, a criticism that you could level at other (but often much better) films like this, Landmine Goes Click could have been better if anyone took a moment to somehow reframe the main plot points. Either underlining how disproportionate the reaction from Daniel is, making Ilya a more mysterious figure, or leaving more space for the third act to feel more organic and well-developed, any of these three things could have improved the movie, and all three together could have REALLY improved things.
It doesn’t help that the cast aren’t strong enough to help detract from the problems in the script. Tolordava is the worst, and I cannot figure out whether or not his performance could have been helped by better dialogue. Locke has the most thankless of the three roles, which is a shame because she is the best of the three leads. As for Knight, nothing he does ever feels quite right, whether he is being cheery and friendly, angry, shocked, or quite unhinged. Again, however, it is difficult to tell just how much these actors are hampered by the awful script.
Aside from the poor script and performances, it’s worth mentioning that nothing else manages to stand out in a positive way. From the direction and editing to the cinematography and pacing, mediocrity is the best you can hope for to distract you from the awfulness. So your best bet is, like any area where landmines are set, to stay as far away from this as possible.
3/10
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