Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Trap House’ on Netflix, an eyeroller of a crime-thriller starring Dave Bautista
Trap House (now streaming on Netflix) finds former pro wrestler/Marvel alum/action flick guy Dave Bautista in exactly the type of movie you’d expect a former pro wrestler/Marvel alum/action flick guy to star in. Cast alongside Bobby Cannavale and Avatar’s Spider himself, Jack Champion, Bautista reteams with his Stuber director Michael Dowse – a fact that might excite three, maybe three-and-a-half of you – for this boilerplate crime programmer, that looks utterly generic on the surface but is quietly a candidate for the most ridiculous movie you’ll likely see all year.
TRAP HOUSE: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
The Gist: EL PASO, TEXAS. Ray Seale (Bautista) and Andre Washburn (Cannavale) ease on down the road in a Trojan Winnebago. See, they want to look like a coupla dudes on a road trip, but they actually have a cadre of fellow DEA agents hidden in the back. Their goal? Bust into a phony gas station and staunch the flow of drugs from a cartel tunnel that goes all the way to Mexico. The sting goes poorly. After the bad guys rig the tunnel to blow, one of the good guys is gunned down by a sniper. Another kid, left fatherless. That would be Jesse (Blu del Barrio), who’s part of a tight cadre of teenage pals whose parents are DEA agents. That includes Ray’s son Cody (Champion), who’s 18, has a dead mom (she got sick) and a rebellious streak. He’s too much for Ray to handle, and Ray would be the first to admit he struggles to lasso the kid.
But there’s trust between them. How much trust? Enough that Ray brings Cody to a trap house – a place drug dealers keep their goods and/or cash – and Cody gets a big eyeful of the rip – that is, the big piles of cash, which you’ll recognize if you saw The Rip – stacked on a table. Then they go to the DEA office where Cody can see the Hollywood-standard Criminal Investigation Bulletin Board full of sensitive information and take photos of it. And now Cody is fully armed with everything he needs to heist some dough from some real shitbags. This ain’t exactly the mostest airtightest arm of the DEA here, is it? Now let it be known that Cody doesn’t want the money so he can buy weed and a nice set of wheels; no, upon learning that the payout to a dead DEA agent’s family is barely more than bubkus, he recruits his fellow DEA agent offspring buddies to help him so they can give the money to Jesse’s poor bereaved family. See, Cody’s angry when he learns from his pops that they had to set up a donation drive for Jesse’s family. “So if you die, I get a GoFundMe?” Cody spits at his dad.
Cody and his pals load up on official DEA gear – kevlar vests, night-vision goggles, tasers, bean-bag shotguns, but no guns with real bullets because that’s too scary – with remarkable ease, apparently because the security code to the storage facility of the slop-assest DEA office in the country is 12345. Then they get to robbin’ the bad guys. Between that and homework and the wrestling team, you’d think Cody wouldn’t have time to cozy up to the New Girl In School, Teresa (Inde Navarrette), but hey, when you’re 18, there’s always a little extra gas in the tank for some smoochin’. He’s also too hormonal and moronic to realize the maniacs who run the cartel (Kate del Castillo and Tony Dalton) are wild-eyed dangerous SOBs who make their subordinates shoot each other in an attempt to root out the rat. Meanwhile, Ray and Andre puzzle over who might be coordinating these hits, unaware that – gasp – the call is coming from inside the house.
What Movies Will It Remind You Of? Hey, at least The Rip featured a slumming Affleck and Damon. And even though it isn’t particularly “good” in the sense that it fails to elicit copious eyerolls, it’s a better generic Baustista actioner than the My Spy movies, In the Lost Lands and the cheesegrater-on-your-ass that is The Wrecking Crew.
Performance Worth Watching: Don’t toss Bautista onto the inarticulate-lunkhead slagheap next to Diesel and Stallone – his work in Glass Onion, Blade Runner 2049 and The Last Showgirl showcase his range. He’s the best thing about Trap House, which he holds together with the occasional moment of understated gravitas. Of course, that still pretty much means the movie wastes his talent.
Sex And Skin: None.
Our Take: Trap House is a shambles of a movie that isn’t sure if it wants to be a grim crime-drama or an outta-control-teenz comedy. It might have something to say about familial anxieties within law-enforcement households, or it might be a just-go-with-it absurdist escapade. Dowse’s strong suit is lickety-split pacing urging us to appreciate the action sequences’ savvy direction and practical effects while we zoom past the movie’s myriad implausibilities, tonal discrepancies and plot holes. But ultimately, none of this stuff has any standing or agency within the film. My biggest takeaway? This is the most incompetent, loosy-goosiest law-enforcement office in a movie since The Naked Gun.
So maybe it is a comedy, if you’re being generous. Bautista seemed to have received different direction, though, because he humps through this thing like it’s a death march, while Cannavale acts as if he doesn’t believe a single word of this screenplay, which, well, amen, brother. By the time the movie guns it through some ill-advised third-act twists, you might be howling with laughter, but nothing’s funnier than the final shot, which teases a sequel. Hope springs eternal, I guess.
Our Call: Crap House. Too easy. SKIP IT.
John Serba is a freelance film critic from Grand Rapids, Michigan. Werner Herzog hugged him once.
