Title: Rift
MPAA Rating: PG-13 / TV-14
Director: Jason Winn
Starring: Darren Cain, David Lee Garver, Josh Hooks
Runtime: 1 hr 11 mins

What It Is: Jason Cole (Cain) is a successful FBI agent with a promising future and a loving wife. Following a sting that leaves a powerful kingpin named Magnus Valtteri (Curt Bonnem) shot on sight. When Jason’s anniversary comes around and his wife Dr. Savannah Cole (Brooke Montalvo) suggests it’s the right time for them to have a baby, Jason is met by a mysterious stranger who buys his lunch. The man, Nikolai (Hooks), approaches Jason with a proposal: save hundreds of lives, or just one? Nikolai threatens that bombs are hidden somewhere in the city, while they’re holding Savannah hostage, and Jason has to choose between saving just her or finding the bomb that will end up killing a building full of people.

What We Think: Ringing familiar to other contemporary crime thrillers, namely Sleepless comes to mind, Rift brings us an even more simplified story that boils the genre down to its core elements. You have your special agents running from their past, a family member being held hostage, a sassy British villain, and bombs. If any of these clichés or archetypes tickle your fancy, then you’re in luck, as the film sits very comfortably in meeting every standard its genre asks of it and nothing more. It’s to the point, though its pacing could use some work as it lags in the first act, centered on its protagonist worrying about his wife wanting to try for a child for 20-30 odd minutes. It also feels a little too quiet throughout the film, with the soundtrack and sound design being more scarce than necessary. The acting generally is very good and enjoyable; the cast is magnetic and obviously talented, though their dialogue doesn’t encounter much originality: the protagonist is stoic and obsessed with saving everyone and pulling one over the villain, the British sassy villain says sassy British things, the wife is concerned with having a family and then is only seen crying out for help several times for the rest of the movie, so on, so forth.

Our Grade: D+, A non-offensive, cookie-cutter thriller, Rift doesn’t bring much else to the table that other films already have, but the effort is clean and the acting is smooth nonetheless. There’s clearly some backbone to the production, thanks to the camerawork and editing, so I hope to see the filmmakers’ next installment play with a script that has more going on to really make the performances stand out all the more.