Bent is a 2018 thriller about a shamed former cop on his latest private investigation who connects a murder case to a government conspiracy involving rogue agents from a top spy agency.
Karl Urban is fun to watch. Always has been, even in movies that really don’t hold up. From the Star Trek reboots to Dredd and even Doom, he’s a solid action star that has yet to really land that one defining role to make him so. With Bobby Moresco‘s latest Bent, he gets another chance, and once again, the guy has presence, a terrific lead that holds the film mostly together, mostly, even if the whole thing is ultimately generic fluff with not much to seperate it from dozens others just like it.
Danny Gallagher (Urban) is an undercover cop, a good one, who works with partner Charlie Horvath (Vicent Spano), the two long standing and deep undercover. One night, they head to a houseboat to meet their target, a crime lord named Driscoll (John Finn), but something isn’t right. Driscoll takes Jimmy aside, out of sight and soon after, shots are fired and in the aftermath, Charlie is dead, Danny is wounded and Driscoll is on the run. More troubling is that Danny shot who he thought was one of Driscoll’s cronies, but was in fact, a cop wearing a wire. Sent to prison for doing so, it’s three years later before he’s released. Convinced he was framed, he sets out to get revenge, siding with his mentor and former cop Jimmy Murtha (Andy Garcia), while dealing with a dangerous but seductive government agent named Rebecca (Sofía Vergara).
A disgraced cop on a quest for redemption isn’t exactly a fresh idea, and Moresco’s script, adapted from Joseph P. O’Donnell‘s novel, doesn’t stray too far from the familiar, even if the film is loaded with some good performances and direction. Gallagher isn’t well liked by the boys in uniform once he’s freed, his reputation as a cop killer all the excuse they need to keep harassing him. He tries to reconnect with his old girlfriend Kate (Grace Byers), a talented lounge singer that lost everything in the wake of his scandal and now works as a waitress, but she’s slow to welcome him back. Meanwhile, he commits to putting all the jagged pieces of that fateful night back together in hopes of setting things straight. This leads to plenty of confrontations, where Danny learns that not everything in the past was on the up and up.
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One of the weaknesses of many in this genre is the need to keep things economical, putting the hero into often unbelievable exchanges that strain plausibility, something Bent comes stacked with from the start. With a few bits of half-baked dialogue, Danny gets access to places he really shouldn’t have, and on the road is able to instantly pick out that he’s being followed. It’s all the usual genre suspects geared to keep Danny on the right track, working on a countdown that he’s desperate to beat if he’s going to get himself cleared (he marks days on a big wall calendar like he was living in an 80s crime thriller).
Even with all that, and Moresco’s unwavering need to ride the rails, Urban still manages to be watchable, his gritty bearded somber portrayal really the only reason to stay on board. Urban is naturally better than the material, but does his best to keep true to the pulpiness of it all. Vergara however is not ever convincing, a good comedic actress not at all right for this, but that’s not why she was hired of course. Bent is meant to be seedy, sexy and a little cheesy, feeling sort of like a throwback to a time when loner cop-on-the-edge direct-to-video titles ruled the rental store shelves. Do with that what you will, but this is one-note action boilerplate that makes very few waves in the shallow end.