A drama set in the Cayman Islands trying to show the many levels of crime which are present, with both locals and people stopping by.
I will admit that I have tried to find this film to watch for many years now. Yes I was a massive fan of Orlando Bloom as a teenager (please don’t judge) so when I saw that this film was on Netflix UK I decided to give it a chance and in all honesty the film is a bit of a mess. I may have 2004 as the date for the top of the review but I do believe it took a couple of years to get a release anywhere and that is often stated as 2006. But straight to DVD in most countries. Having now watched it I can understand why in all honesty.
The film has a couple of stories going on at the same time and overlapping. One of them is the crime levels taking place in the Cayman Islands. Another is Shy and his love affair, which turns bad when the girl’s brother decides he actually raped her and he ends up with acid thrown in his face and he only spends 4 months in prison. But don’t forget he is the son of a powerful rich man! Then there is a dirty businessman who is trying to escape the feds and finds himself in the islands.
So with all of those different things going on it is actually quite hard to focus on one of the stories, but none of them really manage to engage you as you just don’t care at all about the different characters. I always think that makes a massive difference in a film like this, that you have to be bothered by the characters to actually care about the stories. This doesn’t manage to do that so you aren’t really bothered with how it is all going to turn out.
Shy is a character who they attempt to give layers to with plenty of mentions of how good-looking he is before the whole acid incident. To try to make you feel sorry for him and understand how difficult this has then made his life due to the fact of how much he actually cared about his looks.
I won’t be recommending you to watch this film, as plenty of good ones to watch on Netflix and this certainly is not one of them unfortunately. I think it tried to focus on too many different things, which is a shame when you look at the pretty good cast it managed to pull together. In theory a good idea but just doesn’t manage to follow through with them. I’m guessing it doesn’t paint the Cayman Islands in a very good light!
