Blu-ray Review: Cat Run

The first time I heard about Cat Run, it was in the press release for the film’s home video release. I must confess it sounded somewhat interesting, and when I saw the movie’s original theatrical artwork, I thought it had a somewhat cool retro/mondo vibe going on for it. Of course, any possibility of buoyancy Cat Run was ultimately ruined as soon as I popped this awful flick into my Blu-ray player — and I discovered that this dreadful attempt at being trendy penned by two nobodies and helmed by the same man who previously insulted us with Dark Tide and Turistas just plain sucked. Big surprise.

The story here finds top-billed Paz Vega as a high-end escort (and single mother of one) named Catalina (a.k.a. Cat) in Eastern Europe. When she witnesses a brutal massacre of call girls in order to cover up an accidental murder performed by a corrupt American politician (Christopher McDonald, whom we get to see more of than we have ever truly wanted to see), she hits the road — stealing the car and phone of two nerdy friends (Scott Mechlowicz and Alphonso McAuley), who subsequently start up a low-rent private investigation agency in order to track the now-missing Cat down.

Of course, there are more people looking for Cat, such as a wickedly-evil-but-nevertheless-proper hit woman (Janet McTeer, who looks like she could be Helen Mirren’s daughter) who shoots and/or chops up anyone who wanders into her sights. At one point, she even chops off the remaining appendage of a tri-amputee (played by D.L. Hughley, with a great deal of CGI assistance) — a moment that is supposed to be humorous (as are a number of the film’s gorier moments), but simply sickens its viewers instead. The nausea continues as director John Stockwell keeps upping the Guy Ritchie Hip Meter to meet with modern standards of incompetence.

Universal Studios Home Entertainment releases this pointless b-movie on Blu-ray in a single-disc release (no DVD or Digital Copy to be found here, thankfully) with a pretty decent video transfer and a DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 audio track that is OK overall. Stockwell provides an audio commentary for those of you who really want to pretend to give a damn, and the disc’s special features also include a handful of even-less-memorable-than-the-movie-itself deleted scenes and some making-of stuff wherein cast and crew give each other the usual amount of praise for creating a pile of complete and total crap.

To recap it all: Cat Run has a weak story, terrible acting, and any movie that resorts to using a Fergie song is just plain bad in my book. Do yourself a favor and avoid it.