I remember when D-Tox was first released. Some people were appreciative of the fact that Stallone had decided to star in something that was more akin to a slasher movie than his usual action fare. I didn't think that seemed like a good idea though, and I'm sure I remember agreeing with the overall reaction - a bit of a shrug - to something that seemed unlikely to surround a star like Stallone with the usual genre tropes.
Stallone is Jake Malloy, a detective who ends up being stalked by a serial killer. His life is ruined by this mysterious figure, which leads him to a low point in his life, drinking and contemplating eating a bullet from his own gun. His boss gets him checked into a clinic that specialises in helping police and military personnel who have had a hard time of things, to put it mildly, but it's not long until Malloy suspects that the killer has followed him to the facility, which is isolated and surrounded by a lot of snow and ice.
Based on a book, "Jitter Joint", by Howard Swindle, it's not surprising to see that this was the first of only two screenplays, to date, written by Ron L. Brinkerhoff. It's a star vehicle with a cracking ensemble cast that fails to make good use of anyone onscreen. Stallone isn't a good fit for the material, and I will give a huge reward to anyone who can tell me, without using Google or IMDb, all of the main supporting players, and what characters they portray.
Director Jim Gillespie may have made his name with I Know What You Did Last Summer, a similarly bloodless, but more enjoyable, endeavour, but he's just not up to the task of turning the clichéd material here into something more exciting and entertaining. I can see why everyone involved got involved, considering how many times Stallone has worked with familiar material and made something appealing to his sizeable fanbase, but this fails as a cat and mouse movie, and completely fails as a sorta-slasher movie.
As much as I tend to like his performances, Stallone is miscast here. He never feels as if he's doing anything more than picking up a paycheck, and sadly isn't up to the task of making his character as vulnerable and weakened as he needs to be for most of the runtime. I like Charles S. Dutton, who has a couple of decent moments, and Polly Walker works for the poorly-written role she's given (a woman who Malloy connects with at the centre, of course), but the only other people who make any impression are Kris Kristofferson, Robert Patrick, Jeffrey Wright, and Robert Prosky, and all of them stand out thanks to overcoming the horrible script. That may sound all well and good, but this is a film that also has roles for Courtney B. Vance, Stephen Lang, Tom Berenger, Christopher Fulford, Sean Patrick Flanery, and Dina Meyer, and each one of those actors is either horribly wasted or barely even noticeable (aka horribly wasted in a slightly different way).
There’s never enough to care about here, in terms of the characters or the potential thrills, and the end result is a charmless mess that can’t even be saved by star power. Incompetence, or carelessness, behind the camera guarantees constant dullness in front of the camera, both visually and plot-wise, and I would have to warn all but the most die-hard Stallone fans away from this one. Although not a vast improvement, I recommend the similar Whiteout as a better alternative viewing choice.
3/10
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