Movie Review: Dern, Katt and Turturro in a C-thriller “Overrun” with cliches

“Overrun” is 109 minutes of every action pic cliche under the sun, and a heist set in a mausoleum, which I have to admit I’ve never seen before.

There’s a safe in the mausoleum. It’s guarded by inattentive Russian mobsters, the best kind, and a sassy tech nerd is the body cam “eyes” our hero uses to break in. So we’re back to “cliches” in a flash.

“You gotta love the Russians!”

It’s a picture populated by Bruce Dern, playing a Russian mob boss without a hint of the accent or language facility his son has. That’s the son (Nick Benseman) who’s killed by mobster Ray (Robert Mianno), who then pins it on this ex-military “extraction expert” Marcus (Omid Zader) he blackmails into robbing that guarded mausoleum for him.

There are comically “colorful” hit men (Noah Felder, Michael Wayne Foster, Kevin Makely) and women (Monette Moio) sent after Marcus. William Katt, Johnny Messner, Haley Strode and Chris Kallman play jokey, incompetent cops.

And then there’s the reason Marcus is blackmailable. The mob has his sister (Chelsey Goldsmith).

Zader is a lump of a lead. But we also see actors playing cops and pulling the trigger for the first time in their screen acting lives. We hear them reaching for cornball one-liners.

“Have fun dying, Dobbs!” “You can’t kill a cop!” “Oh no? Watch me!”

“You’re not dead, kid!”

And there are not one but TWO tech helpers, New School Augy (Jack Griffo) and Old School Doc (Nicholas Turtorro), guys who direct Marcus into and out of jams.

“On your right. No, your other right.”

Ok, THOSE two are kind of funny.

The rest? Even the “bad guy’s BRIEFCASE” is a cliche.

Rating: unrated, graphic violence

Cast: Omid Zader, Johnny Messner, William Katt, Jack Griffo, Robert Miano,
Chelsey Goldsmith, Haley Strode, Nicholas Turturro and Bruce Dern

Credits: Directed by Josh Tessier, script by Roberto Ahumada, Victoria González and Craig R. Key. A Strike Force release.

Running time: 1:49

About Roger Moore

Movie Critic, formerly with McClatchy-Tribune News Service, Orlando Sentinel, published in Spin Magazine, The World and now published here, Orlando Magazine, Autoweek Magazine
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