Reviewed by Neil Davey
Stars Vin Diesel, Joey Dedio, F. Valentino Morales, Mike Epps, T K Kirkland, Darnell Williams, Suzanne Lanza
Written by Vin Diesel | UK RRP £15.99 | UK certification 15 | Runtime 96 minutes | Directed by Vin Diesel
"Vin Diesel's finest achievement" is the blurb — courtesy of a clearly less fussy website than ours — that adorns the back of this very peculiar Vin Diesel vanity project. Of course, when your CV includes The Chronicles of Riddick and The Pacifier, then a decent cup of tea could be considered your finest achievement. However, my issue is that it's a ludicrous statement when it's applied to something as average as Strays, and to someone who, when given a decent script and a chance to do something other than flex his biceps, can actually turn in a decent performance. After all, Diesel was in Saving Private Ryan which, it's safe to say, is considerably better than this hilariously worthy ego-massager. He was also in Boiler Room, which is a little cracker and also far superior to the would-be gritty Strays. His "finest achievement"? That's insulting to my intelligence AND, amazingly, Diesel's CV.
What you have to remember is that you can pick up Boiler Room on DVD for about £3 these days. Or you can pay £16 for Strays. The choice is yours but let me see if I can make that decision easier. For three quid you can get a classic of modern indie cinema, the (rare) chance to see Ben Affleck act and a script that will knock your socks off. For 16 quid, you get to see Vin Diesel portray himself as a saint of the streets, the only wise man in his hustling crew, who wants to leave the easy money and easy women behind and find some meaning to his life and recite lots of "hey, you fucking morons, bitches have feelings too" type dialogue.
Diesel plays Rick, a sometime drug-dealer and bouncer who's decided that it's all pointless. While his boys run around shagging anything they can, Rick has become more sensitive. He still shags anything that moves, of course: he just feels really bad about it afterwards. Then he meets a new neighbour, Heather (Lanza), and decides that she's his chance for a new life — or would be if his life didn't interfere with this chance to find salvation and a fresh start. It says here. Watching the film certainly doesn't make that clear. Indeed, aside from one hilarious, aggressive, apropos-of-nothing "are you looking at my bird?" speech, his life — which appears to consist of selling drugs infrequently to about two semi-regular customers — barely interferes with him, let alone almost scuppering this tentative redemptive relationship.
The problem? The script. The direction is okay: pedestrian, yes, but okay — and certainly decent enough for a first timer to suggest that there might be a future in the field. The acting is fine. But the script? Jeeeeesus. Think of every student production you've ever had to sit through and combine them. Then remove all the originality and sincerity. LIke I said before: Jeeeeesus. There is one moment where the pretension falls away and Diesel isn't sitting there in his writer's hat just trying to make himself look good, and that's a conversation between Rick and Heather (about needing to work on their own lives before they can work on being together) that just feels ... real. Well, real in this context, anyway, and probably only real in comparison to the earnest bilge that's gone before it.
EXTRAS ** A trailer (yawn) and a better-than-you-might-expect "making of" featurette which might, dangerously, make you look more favourably on the film. However, while you can certainly applaud Diesel for bringing it all in under $50K (and we'll join in, because we love a true indie) there's no excuse to spend that sort of cash on a film that, however you analyse it, is just plain bad.