fayesbridegroom Even Though this film would not be classified as a horror movie, people who enjoyed the original video nasties of the 80's might enjoy this too. On one level I was thinking about the Texas chainsaw massacre and how the remake creates leatherface as an anti-hero. What seems to be lacking in many horror remakes is the ability to pick on, and demonize minority groups and a large dose of misogyny. This film manages this. The idea of casting howard marks, is effective as exploitation cinema in the best possible way, it adds an authenticity to any criminal elements that many develop later in the film.I can see a connection with this film and 'taken' but the dialogue is very poor. Saying that the pacing is good, the plot unfolds at exciting pace. it is not bad as a horror/thriller.

Jay Raskin There's a lot not to like about this movie. It is advertised as an exploitation movie, but it resembles the exploitation movies of the 1970's, just enough sex and violence to cover a two minute trailer. It also tries, but mostly fails to give the lead character much depth and realism.That said, it does a couple of things nicely. We do care about the lead female character and we do feel fear and concern when she is "taken." (Did "Taken" copy the phrase from this movie which was two years earlier?) Also, we do feel a sense of despair for the plight of the lead male character, who is helpless, but not really stupid (until near the end). There is some originally in the plotting, For example, the villain is a psychopathic Russian Muslim convert who doesn't kill people during the Ramadam fasting month. Tell me where you have seen that before? The cinematography and editing are commercially slick. It is nicely done for an ultra-low budget movie like this.One can't blame the filmmakers for disguising the film as an exploitation flick. A more honest description would be "an Albert Camus inspired existentialist meditation on the difficulty of holding onto love in the postmodern capitalist world." Probably, nobody would have seen it if they had advertised the film this way.

MBunge Don't be fooled by Slave. This film is all tricked out like it's some kind of extreme sex and torture bonanza. But outside of a montage that looks like a rap music video inspired by Jennifer Connelly's last scene in Requiem for a Dream, Slave is as tame as a whipped dog. There's some topless chicks, some people get shot, a fist fight that makes as much sense as a field mouse taking on a rhino and that's about it. There's actually little sex and not much violence or other generalized depravity in this movie, which means all it has going for it is the intelligence of its script, the skill of its director and the talents of its cast. Try not to be shocked, but it almost goes 0 for 3.David Dunsmore ( Sam Page) and his hot fiancée Georgie (Nassia Malthe) head to Spain to spend some time with David's estranged father, the shady and relentlessly prickish Robert Dunsmore (Michael Maxwell). Once there, Georgie is abducted and taken to a boat owned by a crazy Russian called The White Arab (David Gant) where she's supposed to be turned into some sort of drug-addled sex slave. Meanwhile, David just sort of wanders around with this forlorn look on his face like a little kid who lost his puppy. There's a scene that explains the break up of David's family and then he teams up with a bartender (Roger Pera) whose sister is also on the Arab's boat, a paring that's like Pee Wee Herman joining up with Charles Bronson, and they decide to storm the boat and save the women they love. Meanwhile, Robert decides to stage his own covert rescue, only to wind up beaten to death by his own son when David mistakenly thinks he catches dear old Dad screwing his incoherent fiancée.Let me start with the two things that were good about Slave. Michael Maxwell is fun to watch as the invincibly piggish Robert Dunsmore. He's not only infinitely more charismatic and entertaining than his wuss of a son, but Maxwell is able to perfectly switch gears when Robert has to display some long buried decency. David Gant is also a great bad guy. He looks evil. He sounds evil. He even moves kind of evil. Plop The White Arab down in something that really is a gore and nudity filled exploitation flick and you'd have the makings of a trashy good time.The rest of this motion picture is not good at all. It is rather visually stylish in the way that so many movies are today, particularly a home movie montage at the start that explains the backstory of David's family, but by the time Slave was 20 minutes old I had already had more than enough of all the fancy editing, imagery and sundry bullcrap. Every technique and shot and filmmaking choice is the same thing you see from every filmmaker born after the debut of Miami Vice on NBC.As for the story…yeesh. Nothing about it makes much sense and it doesn't have nearly enough naked female flesh or simulated brutality to disguise that. How do David and the bartender know where the Arab's boat is? Why does the bartender wait around for this pussified American before starting a rescue effort? Why does Robert, when he's found with Georgie on the boat, provoke his son to violence instead of explaining his heroic motives? Why does a tale of white slavery on the high seas have the soul of a bad romantic comedy? Who did Brett Goldstein blow to get his script produced? Your guess is probably better than mine, especially if you haven't seen this mess.With its lack of violence and sex, Slave doesn't even qualify as a bad horror thriller. It's one of those movies where you view it and wonder what the people who made it thought they were doing. I don't know about you, but I had better things to do with my time. Don't repeat my mistake.

charlytully This tawdry, low-budget version of the Liam Neeson vehicle TAKEN makes the latter movie look like the Cadillac of the almost-deflowered-by-a-sheik genre. One must resist saying SLAVE qualifies as the Yugo in this category, since that would be unfair to Eastern European car makes. Almost every turn in SLAVE's plot is an implausible twist. Most lines of dialog fall flat. If the acting in SLAVE was passable, one could decry this feature as a waste of talent. Fortunately, the cast appears perfectly suitable to the low production values of everything they are given to work with. If I were forced to come up with a few DVD jewel box phrases that might amplify whatever SLAVE's title says to entice potential viewers into renting, I might try "pretentious claptrap" or "unmitigated boredom." There is probably a segment of the movie-watching public to whom these adjectives would sound appealing. My guess is that these masochists vastly outnumber those who would knowingly watch SLAVE if they were given a half-way accurate view of how miserable this feature actually is beforehand.