.45

.45 is definitely a borderline case for this website. Yes, all of the women in the film are bisexual. But this is a crime film from the early 2000’s made by some fucking edgelord so all bisexuality feels extremely performative. If you want to see Milla Jovovich kiss some women, that does technically happen in .45. But it’s infrequent and feels disingenuous when it does happen. And the rest of the movie doesn’t exactly make up for that.

.45 is shot like a mockumentary with interview cutaways. This is how the film begins. Kat looks right down the camera to talk about how large her boyfriend, Big Al’s dick is. She also mentions how Al is a dangerous criminal and she’s dating him because he wouldn’t take no for an answer. Al has an associate named Reilly who is desperately in love with Kat. Kat’s best friend, Vic is bisexual and she and Kat had a brief fling. After Al severely abuses Kat, both Vic and Reilly offer support and possible retaliation against Al. When Kat goes to the cops, she connects with an officer named Liz, who takes Kat in and also develops an attraction towards her. Kat now has a series of people interested in having sex with her and who hate her abusive boyfriend. Perhaps one of these people can deal with Al.

While some of .45 works, the majority of it is just intentionally bad taste edgy bullshit. Most dialogue, especially in the early scenes feels like they took content warnings as some sort of checklist. It’s not impressive and ironically, feels immature. When I say edgy, it just means that this movie would have to have a TV mature rating if it aired on TV at all. We’re not actually pushing “real” boundaries. They just do dialogue that advertisers wouldn’t like. And in this case, I don’t like it either. I’m so unimpressed by things being in bad taste. You know how easy it is to do that? .45’s discussions of sex and anything else seem like the words of a 14 year old trying desperately to seem adult. It would be quaint and almost cute if this movie didn’t have domestic abuse as a huge central theme.

Kat’s characterization is all over the place by the end of the film. After the lengthy depictions of abuse Kat suffered, Liz gives Kat the specific advice that she has power because she’s a beautiful woman. “Lips, tits and hips.” This apparently inspires Kat to seduce four separate people with the goal of dealing with Al. And after this sequence, we get an interview with Kat’s mom about how she’s manipulative and always gets what she wants. I don’t think having sex with numerous people is an all-time mastermind plot, but okay. Yet by the end of the movie, Kat confronts Al and her use of sexual manipulation is clearly supposed to be something empowering. You go, girl? .45 wants Kat to be a seductive femme fatale but also a broken victim of abuse we can root for. It doesn’t succeed in making her both of those things.

Two of the people Kat has sex with for manipulation are women. So I really can’t say this is a movie where Milla Jovovich played a character with clear desire for women. .45 really doesn’t offer that. Early in the film, Al tells Kat he’s jealous of Vic because she and Kat had sex. When Vic shows up moments later, Kat is very affectionate and somewhat sexual with her. All under the eye of Al. This is such an overt example of what performative bisexuality meant back in the 2000s. It’s not just that these are actresses performing for a camera. It’s that within the story, Kat is showing female affection to get a reaction out of the male character.

.45 really did take me back to the mid 2000s. This sort of pseudo-edgy crime narrative feels like it ran rampant then. Or maybe this genre has always been the same level of popular but I’m just not 12 anymore which makes me not the most responsive audience. There’s a good message or two to be found buried deep in .45, but to reach them you have to wade through so much unimpressive bad taste that it doesn’t make even those moments that work have any bearing. Sorry if you wanted to see Milla Jovovich kiss some women, this movie isn’t a good vehicle for that desire.

Overall rating: 3.5/10

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