Multicultural tourists (Yanks Josh Duhamel, Olivia Wilde, and Beau Garrett, party-loving Brits Desmond Askew and Max Brown, and bilingual Aussie Melissa George) looking for a good time in Brazil are left stranded in Nowheresville after a bus crash (quite well-done, too). Instead of waiting around for help, they venture to a private beach in search of a good time. Unfortunately, they get drugged and robbed, in worse trouble than they were before.
But it’s OK, friendly native Kiko (Agles Steib) agrees to guide them through the wilderness to his ‘uncle’s’ cabin to wait for suitable transportation. He even makes a detour to a lovely waterfall and some underwater caves. But the tourists (Turistas being Brazilian for tourists) don’t know that Kiko’s uncle (Miguel Lunardi) ain’t a guy they want to meet, and he has very special plans for them.
This 2006 horror flick has a slightly better cast than “Hostel”, slightly more likeable characters than “Hostel”, is slightly less unpleasant than “Hostel”, slightly better paced than “Hostel”, slightly more palatable than “Hostel”, and director John Stockwell is a slightly better visual stylist than “Hostel” director Eli Roth. Unfortunately, the film is also only slightly different in plot and purpose to “Hostel”, and that really hurts this sometimes watchable, competently made, but plagiaristic, profit-motivated exercise (Yeah, most films are designed to make money, but still…). What also hurts the film, is that the lead villain, isn’t very interesting (though the dastardly plot is a bit more plausible than in “Hostel”), and we don’t get to see enough of him. I wouldn’t exactly recommend it to people who, like me, hated “Hostel” (it’s really just that film but set in Brazil), but credit where credit is due, Stockwell and cinematographer Enrique Chediak sure know how to make some pretty pictures (underwater photographer Peter Zuccarini is a different story, though…), and both Duhamel and George are more ingratiating screen presences than any of the actors in “Hostel”, despite being given little to work with (Duhamel especially gets little in the way of character depth). Steib, as the morally conflicted Kiko steals the picture, in perhaps the best written part.
OVERALL SUMMARY
Tolerable, so long as you don’t mind your torture porn flicks, but definitely a major case of plagiarism, and if you don’t like this sort of thing, you’re probably not going to find much of interest here. It looks good, at any rate.
