THE STORY – In El Paso, Texas an undercover DEA agent and his partner embark on a game of cat and mouse with an audacious group of thieves: their own rebellious teenagers. The teens begin to rob from a dangerous cartel, using their parents’ tactics and top-secret intel.
THE CAST – Dave Bautista, Jack Champion, Sophia Lillis, Tony Dalton, Whitney Peak, Inde Navarrette, Zaire Adams, Kate del Castillo & Bobby Cannavale
THE TEAM – Michael Dowse (Director), Gary Scott Thompson & Tom O’Connor (Writers)
THE RUNNING TIME – 101 Minutes
Like most people (or more likely, most people reading this), I no longer have traditional cable. And yet, I still have a sense of the types of films that would likely air on each channel. For example, TNT – the channel that decidedly knows drama – always favored the kinds of movies intended to entertain dads spending a lazy Sunday afternoon on the couch. There’s comfort in such a distinction; nobody knows internal peace like a middle-aged man catching brief glimpses of, say, “The Bourne Supremacy” in between nap cycles. “Trap House,” the new film from director Michael Dowse (“Goon,” “Stuber”), would feel right at home on that network, perhaps as the meat in a triple feature sandwich of “The Fugitive” and “Die Hard With a Vengeance.” That’s not to say it’s anywhere near the quality of those best-of-their-genre examples, but every network needs some lower-tier fare to shake things up. Not every meal can be filet mignon. For those looking for an entertaining diversion that feels indebted to the action storytelling instincts of the 1990s and 2000s – questionable politics included – you could do worse than “Trap House.”
Dave Bautista plays Ray Seale, our leading man, trying to lead a normal life without his dangerous job as a DEA agent getting in the way. He’s especially concerned with being an attentive father to his teenage son Cody (Jack Champion), who he now has to raise single-handedly after the death of his wife. At school, Cody’s friend group is entirely made up of fellow children of DEA agents, creating a strange parallel between the cadre of high schoolers and Ray’s closest coworkers. Ray’s department in El Paso is currently preoccupied with taking down representatives of the cartel that operates in and around the Texas town. At the same time, Cody and his buddies are on a mission of their own. After the father of their friend Jesse (Blu del Barrio) dies on a DEA mission gone wrong, Jesse is forced to leave school and move due to the federal agency’s lackluster benefits package for surviving family members. To help him and his family, Cody devises a plan: he and his friends will steal tactical gear from their agent parents and rob a local trap house that Cody heard about through his father, using the stolen money to help out their grieving friend. Despite their best efforts to keep their efforts concealed, it feels like only a matter of time before Cody and company’s schemes are uncovered by Ray, who will inevitably have to choose between being a good father and a good agent.
In terms of the basics of a semi-disposable action film – namely, characters to root for and enjoyable action set pieces – “Trap House” delivers. Champion and, especially, Bautista imbue their characters with enough likable and sympathetic energy to make them compelling figures for the audience to follow. The film hammers home this pitiable energy with multiple lingering shots of a poignant family photo of the two of them with their dead wife/mom. And their chemistry as a father-son pair makes them a believable familial duo, both with their own struggles that often intersect with each other’s. Cody’s subplot involving a budding romance with a new schoolmate named Teresa (Inde Navarrette) adds further charm to the film’s human elements. The young couple’s shared dialogue is engaging and playful, building a relatable romantic story that enhances the film’s overall energy rather than detracting from it.
The amateur raids conducted by the high schoolers are dynamically executed, even if their very existence in the story is at times distractingly ridiculous. The teenagers are realistically bumbling, despite being outfitted in military-grade gear; it’s not as if they suddenly become super soldiers just because they’re wearing night vision goggles. The sequences are well-blocked and appropriately tense, especially their first nerve-racking invasion of the titular abode. Amanda Yamate and Jack Latham’s pulsating musical score helps give these scenes a driving, anxious energy.
The aforementioned ridiculous nature of the screenplay is something the film doesn’t hide, which makes it uncertain whether the filmmakers are treating this absurd quality as a bug or a feature. The film’s occasionally serious tone, compounded with the more outrageous plot points, gives it a level of camp that will either be a total turn-off for viewers or draw them in for unexpected reasons. And it’s not just the story that treads into silly territory – certain individual moments are unexpectedly hilarious, like the time the cartel leader Benito (Tony Dalton) smashes a glass two times in one scene after receiving bad news. But it’s not all fun and games. In our current political landscape, it’s challenging to consistently cheer on armed federal agents, especially when part of the film relies on the audience being not only understanding of but also unquestioningly supportive of instances where these governmental representatives bend the rules. In terms of corrupt federal practices, the film hand-waves them at best and normalizes them at worst.
Such wince-inducing plot points are de rigueur for many action films from around the turn of the last century; it’s just surprising to see them being used in a new movie. But along with said questionable script decisions come predictable “twists,” carried out by snappy, sarcastic dialogue that also feels like a relic of the Clinton era. As such, “Trap House” may evoke strange feelings of nostalgia, despite being a decidedly contemporary film.
