Powerless

A young woman invites a young man at her place. But what appears to be a date ends up as a ‘revenge session’. It looks like the woman is trying to revenge her younger sister who has been raped. But is she on the right track?

‘Powerless’ by director Sherwin Allen is a thriller that will surprise you with quite some thrills. The meanings obviously hang on the title. To the obvious allusion and rough judging of the powerful taking advantage of the weak there is also a flip side: what about someone forcibly immobilized and subdued to judgement? Are they not powerless as well? So who is truly powerless after all? A person that has someone to talk for himself/herself or someone who has no one on their side and is also deprived to speak for themselves? Who is the real victim?

Things and answers become even more complicated when a new question arises: is he really the one who did it? It also draws a very, very thin line between a felon and an ‘avenger’ on his own. It puts the ‘avenger’s’ ethics to question placing it not very far from a felon’s character. They share the same ‘thirst of blood’, the same rashness and the same lack of power to distinguish good from bad. And when the identity of the real felon is brought to question there is one more who will look powerless: our so called ‘avenger’. Not only that his deeds will have their purpose annihilated and therefore will make her look that way but she will also be powerless in front of her new status: if she really did a mistake, she won’t be able to take back her actions.

The film was entertaining, however we would have liked to see a bit more attention to the cinematic treatment: like a little more time spent on writing the script and a bit more patience on the overall artistic approach.

TMFF RATING: