Summary
This Cape Town crime comedy movie is exhausting and tedious, and not even outrageous sex dolls could save it.
The problem with The Shakedown is that the opening twenty minutes have promise and abundant fun, but then the South African film resorts to a silly crime-comedy. The issue then compounds itself with a highly unlikable lead character.
Justin Diamond (Carl Beukes) is a medical aid broker. He’s all about publicity and selling himself as a local, lively family man. At his daughter’s bar mitzvah, he shows reels of videos where he comes across as this supportive father.
But it’s all an act. He’s sleeping with his blonde bomb physio on the side, and unfortunately, he did not test her IQ. Suddenly, he finds himself under threat as his mistress, Marika, threatens to release their sex video unless he pays up a significant amount of money to end their affair.
But it isn’t really about the money at all. He’s misunderstood the feelings she’s gained for him. Rather than taking accountability and coming clean with his wife, he recruits his criminally inclined brother, Dovi (Emmanuel Castis), to intimidate her. But it goes horribly wrong.
When the movie leans towards a man sweating that his unknowing wife will find out about his affair, it’s a way better movie. But it falls apart when the film moves into the next phase, where Justin relies on his brother to clean up his mess.
It doesn’t help that Justin displays himself as a morally just man with a distaste for his brother, who he ironically uses. I frankly don’t care whether Justin got away with his affair or not. And that’s a problem because all the gags and the action rely on the audience caring about his predicament.
I have serious doubts that any viewer will have any feelings for this character because he’s essentially comparable to a person in your community who you cannot trust, no matter how they present themselves as good.
But taking away the character assassination, The Shakedown deploys comedy tactics similar to The Hangover, which is madly overused in today’s films, and frankly, I’m bored of it.
Unfortunately, resorting to gag after gag and silly crime after silly crime is lazy. It takes away from the premise (which I didn’t like because of the lead character anyway), and ironically, it does not wind the clock down quickly enough.
