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Plot: Julia Voth, Erin Cummings and America Olivo arrive at a desert hideaway to steal a stash of diamonds from an underworld kingpin. With their passion, drugs and greed, things soon start spiralling out of control.
What’s Good: The snazzy fight sequences between the women; probably for a few, the abundance of skin-show.
What’s Bad: The lazy direction, lack of a proper storyline, the unnecessary flashbacks.
Loo break: Anytime. You wouldn’t miss a thing.
IM Global and Bombshell Pictures’ Bitch Slap is a crime thriller. Trixie (Julia Voth), an air-headed prostitute, Hel (Erin Cummings), a sex-toy magnate, and Camero (America Olivo), a drug cartel-running killer, have pulled up in a desert with a kidnapped man in the trunk of their car, torturing him to reveal the whereabouts of a hidden bag of diamonds.
The movie kicks off with a series of flashbacks into each of the characters’ not-so-distant past with lots of skin show, sex scenes and bloody action scenes. The opening sequence spends at least five minutes on the three lead characters getting out of their car in slow motion, focussing on their hair, lips, thighs and copious cleavages. From then on, it’s a search for the diamonds. The tension builds up as they vent their anger, fear and insecurities to each other.
Bitch Slap is an obscure mix of Planet Terror (action, blood, guns), The Usual Suspects (a mysterious underworld lynchpin), Memento (backwards narration), and an excuse to see the girls make out. The screenplay writers, Eric Gruendemann and Rick Jacobson, have used a usual storyline of ‘stealing from the thieves’ and have just tinkered around a bit to pump it up with action and oomph. The movie begins with the three women in the desert and the flashbacks explain how they got there. But their background stories aren’t captivating or meaningful. The scenes begin to get random when the girls start throwing water at each other in slow motion and then confess about their love for each other without any rhyme or reason.
At one point, you begin to wonder whether it’s an action flick, a B-grade movie or one based on the idea of extreme feminism. The girls rarely call each other by their names, preferring to address each other with expletives instead.
Julia Voth, Erin Cummings and America Olivo play the roles of a bimbette, a genius and a junkie respectively with ease. Kevin Sorbo, as Mr. Pheonix, and Lucy Lawless, as Mother Superior, have blink-and-miss roles but they make a mark.
Rick Jacobson’s direction is passable; the flashbacks in the story seem meaningless, the outright lesbianism between the characters seems to have been included just for kicks and the love triangle between Julia, Erin and America doesn’t make sense. The CGI green screen scenes are badly executed, and there doesn’t even seem to be any effort to cover it up in the post-production. The music (by John R. Graham) is passable.
Even with all the cleavage, blood-splattering action, steamy lesbian scenes, and explosions, Bitch Slap fails to hold your attention. When Julia Voth exclaims in wide-eyed wonder, “Oh, my God! You’re a wicked-cool covert operative, masquerading as a sex-toy tycoon?” you understand where this movie is headed.
