'Bushwick' Begins Well, but Fizzles on the Way

Lucy (Brittany Snow) steps out of a subway with her boyfriend intending to visit her grandmother in Bushwick, Brooklyn.  To her shock, she discovers that the familiar neighborhood has erupted into an apocalyptic urban war zone, and her boyfriend is immediately killed by a blast.  Stumbling upon a basement, she meets a war veteran named Stupe (Dave Bautista) who agrees to help her muddle through black-clad mercenaries, gangs, looting, insurgency, and chaos toward her destination.

Bushwick starts off interestingly enough.  There’s an intriguing sense of “WTF is going on?” to the storytelling, and it has a captivatingly gritty, tense atmosphere and camera work that reminded me of Children of Men.   However, as it progresses, and as more of the plot is peeled off, it begins to fizzle, becoming middling.

The story has implausible logistical and thematic ideas.  That’s not necessarily a problem per se, but it fails to convincingly rationalize them to enforce suspension of disbelief.  Thus, this is a huge distraction.

There are also some strange attempts of humor or whimsy that doesn’t fit to the overall tone of the film.  There’s a character who loses a finger, and she remark is “What am I going to do when I get married?” without any hint of sarcasm – or if it has, then that actually makes it worse, since the character isn’t even established as snarky.  I enjoyed the absurd, surreal scene of heavily armed, Molotov-throwing Orthodox Jews though.

In the end, Bushwick is as messily frenzied as its depicted scenario.  There are some thrills to be had, but they aren’t enough to make up for its poorly thought-out script.