Backtrace is a 2018 crime thriller about the lone surviving thief of a violent armored car robbery who is sprung from a high security facility and administered an experimental drug.
There’s a new breed of bad movies out there, mid-level budget films that would be, fifteen twenty years ago, stocked in the back of video stores as late night cheesy fodder for fans of such, now far more accessible and cast with big Hollywood names. The likes of Nicholas Cage and Bruce Willis to name a few, are now making just as many of these lowrent titles as they are on the marquee of big studio films. Now comes Sylvester Stallone in Brian A. Miller‘s bland thriller Backtrace, heading a cast of hardworking actors floundering in a middling project that does what it intends I suppose but without much style or reason to exist.
Running from a heist that nets three robbers, including ring leader MacDonald (Matthew Modine), twenty million dollars, they meet up with their partners and get into a firefight, leaving two dead and Mac shot in the head. Seven years later, he’s in a criminal hospital suffering amnesia, unsure why he’s jailed or where he and his cronies buried most of the money. While incarcerated, he meets curious fellow inmate Lucas (Ryan Guzman), who arranges an escape, putting him the hands of a team who give him experimental drugs that enhance his memory in hopes of finding the money, but there are side effects. Meanwhile, on the case for all these years is veteran detective Sykes (Sylvester Stallone), partnered with FBI Agent Franks (Christopher McDonald), the pair looking to figure it all out.
It’s tempting to call Backtrace generic, but in truth, Mike Maples‘ script has some legs. It’s just handled without any energy, flipping through plot points with almost mechanical zeal. Playing out more like an episode of a procedural crime drama on TV, you almost expect commercial interruptions as scenes transition. Employing all the clichés from top to bottom, including a silly evidence wall with all kinds of red string and a conflict between the local cops and the FBI to list only a very few, this all panders to an audience the filmmakers must suspect have no ability to connect dots on their own.
This is really Modine’s movie, who actually delivers far more than the film seems to deserve. He’s always been sort of an underrated actor, given smaller parts in big movies of late, but is the saving grace in this tepid offering. He outpaces every other actor around him, trying to give his suffering Mac some legitimacy. Stallone, however, doesn’t have much of a presence, not in the film all that much, which isn’t all that surprising. The rest of the movie is entirely substandard, filled with lifeless dialogue, meaningless action and loose attempts at mystery and action.
Fans of Modine and Stallone will (might) want to check this off their list simply to complete their filmographies, but otherwise, Backtrace is rudimentary filler with absolutely nothing to give it any fun, something essential for a title like this.