AVARICE
***
Director: John V. Soto
Screenplay: John V. Soto, Andrew Slattery, Dane Millerd and Adam Enslow.
Principal cast:
Gillian Alexy
Luke Ford
Alexandra Nell
Ryan Panizza
Téa Heathcote-Marks
Nick Atkinson
Country: Australia
Classification: M
Runtime: 88 mins.
Australian release date: 8 December 2022.
John V. Soto is a West Australian-based filmmaker who’s flown under the radar when it comes to big-screen theatrical releases in his home territory, but his formula of making genre movies for sale into international DVD, digital download and streaming markets has been paying dividends for many years now. As he told FilmInk in a 2010 interview, “Ultimately, there’s no point making a film if it never sees the light of day. The film needs to be attractive to international distributors, otherwise it’s impossible to recoup its cost.” Have you ever seen or heard of Crush (2009), Needle (2010), The Reckoning (2014) or The Gateway (2018)? Didn’t think so, yet they’ve all been purchased for release in overseas territories and, presumably, made money for their distributors. Indeed, his latest effort, Avarice, has already sold to Belgium, China, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, the Middle East, North America, South Korea, the UK and more, so he's obviously doing something right.
Avarice follows an outwardly successful family living the dream in an affluent suburb but, scratch the surface, and the dream isn’t quite as sweet as it seems. Investment banker Ash (Luke Ford) is married to champion archer Kate (Gillian Alexy) and they have a teenage daughter Sarah (Téa Heathcote-Marks) - they seem to have it all. The marriage is wavering, however, because Ash works long hours and neglects his wife, Sarah resents her mum prying into her life and Kate feels unsupported by her husband when she competes in archery contests. In the hope of getting the family back on track, Luke rents a beautiful house in the hills overlooking the city for some time away from all their distractions but, on the way there, much to Kate’s annoyance, he takes a business call. The news is good - he’s just closed a huge business deal - but his failure to switch off gets things off to a rocky start. They’re about to get a lot worse, though, because someone else must have heard about the deal too, and that night the house is invaded and Luke is abducted, leaving Kate and Sarah at the mercy of a dangerous psychopath. What’s a woman to do? Especially one adept at using a longbow?
The script that Soto and his co-writers have contrived stays well within the confines of the revenge thriller genre and won’t win any awards for originality but there’s always a measure of satisfaction in seeing an underdog rise up and put things right. Avarice is a handsome-looking movie, entirely shot in Perth and its surrounding suburbs by cinematographer David Le May, who previously worked with Soto on The Gateway. Gillian Alexy makes a suitably kick-ass heroine although Luke Ford has done better work than this in the past, and the bad guys, led by Alexandra Nell and Ryan Panizza, are appropriately bad-ass. Once they start, the action scenes are well-choreographed and executed.
Avarice won’t break any box office records; with a budget estimated at around a million and a half dollars, it won’t have to in order to achieve a decent return for its investors. What it does do is keep viewers entertained for 90 minutes which, I suspect, is exactly what John V. Soto had in mind when he set out on this project.
Screenplay: John V. Soto, Andrew Slattery, Dane Millerd and Adam Enslow.
Principal cast:
Gillian Alexy
Luke Ford
Alexandra Nell
Ryan Panizza
Téa Heathcote-Marks
Nick Atkinson
Country: Australia
Classification: M
Runtime: 88 mins.
Australian release date: 8 December 2022.
John V. Soto is a West Australian-based filmmaker who’s flown under the radar when it comes to big-screen theatrical releases in his home territory, but his formula of making genre movies for sale into international DVD, digital download and streaming markets has been paying dividends for many years now. As he told FilmInk in a 2010 interview, “Ultimately, there’s no point making a film if it never sees the light of day. The film needs to be attractive to international distributors, otherwise it’s impossible to recoup its cost.” Have you ever seen or heard of Crush (2009), Needle (2010), The Reckoning (2014) or The Gateway (2018)? Didn’t think so, yet they’ve all been purchased for release in overseas territories and, presumably, made money for their distributors. Indeed, his latest effort, Avarice, has already sold to Belgium, China, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, the Middle East, North America, South Korea, the UK and more, so he's obviously doing something right.
Avarice follows an outwardly successful family living the dream in an affluent suburb but, scratch the surface, and the dream isn’t quite as sweet as it seems. Investment banker Ash (Luke Ford) is married to champion archer Kate (Gillian Alexy) and they have a teenage daughter Sarah (Téa Heathcote-Marks) - they seem to have it all. The marriage is wavering, however, because Ash works long hours and neglects his wife, Sarah resents her mum prying into her life and Kate feels unsupported by her husband when she competes in archery contests. In the hope of getting the family back on track, Luke rents a beautiful house in the hills overlooking the city for some time away from all their distractions but, on the way there, much to Kate’s annoyance, he takes a business call. The news is good - he’s just closed a huge business deal - but his failure to switch off gets things off to a rocky start. They’re about to get a lot worse, though, because someone else must have heard about the deal too, and that night the house is invaded and Luke is abducted, leaving Kate and Sarah at the mercy of a dangerous psychopath. What’s a woman to do? Especially one adept at using a longbow?
The script that Soto and his co-writers have contrived stays well within the confines of the revenge thriller genre and won’t win any awards for originality but there’s always a measure of satisfaction in seeing an underdog rise up and put things right. Avarice is a handsome-looking movie, entirely shot in Perth and its surrounding suburbs by cinematographer David Le May, who previously worked with Soto on The Gateway. Gillian Alexy makes a suitably kick-ass heroine although Luke Ford has done better work than this in the past, and the bad guys, led by Alexandra Nell and Ryan Panizza, are appropriately bad-ass. Once they start, the action scenes are well-choreographed and executed.
Avarice won’t break any box office records; with a budget estimated at around a million and a half dollars, it won’t have to in order to achieve a decent return for its investors. What it does do is keep viewers entertained for 90 minutes which, I suspect, is exactly what John V. Soto had in mind when he set out on this project.