Break Even (2020) Movie Review

Director: Shane Stanley

Writer: CJ Walley (Screenplay)

Starring: Tasya Teles, Steve Guttenberg, James Callis, Joseph Reitman, Joanna Pacula, Ivan Sergei

Plot: Four adventurous friends find 50M in cash at a remote island only to discover it was left by the DEA for the Cartel in a rogue deal.

Tagline – Live Fast…Play Dirty

Runtime: 1 Hour 35 Minutes

There may be spoilers in the rest of the review

Story: Break Even starts as four friends Jaq (Teles), Rosie (Reyes), Sebastian (Bailey) and Dash (Fellows) are having a weekend away on a yacht, which will see them stumble across $50 Million dollars, money that is part of a DEA deal with Agent Crowe (Pacula) has with drug lord Zalman (Callis).

The friends decide to keep the money with Jaq offering them a chance to clean the money to keep things to themselves, but now they must go on the run from the threat coming their way.

Thoughts on Break Even

Characters – Jaq takes charge of the friends, having the knowledge to help the friends escape with the money, she has the connections, makes the plan and is prepared to escape, she is distant from her partner on the trip and pushes them into break the law if they want to keep the money. Rosie, Dash and Bradley complete the friend group, each of them is thrown into a world they are not prepared to be in, filled with the errors along the way. Agent Crowe is leading the deal, she is as dirty as they come and is always looking to get money out of any drug deal on the island. Zalman is the drug lord that is waiting for the deal to go through, he will always kill the people that get in his way or take from him.

Performances – We do have a big cast here, which at times doesn’t always give the more important cast members enough spotlight, but when Tasya Teles takes charge, she does look the part, while Brent Bailey and Erik Fellows fall into the generic male characters, and Alisa Reyes grows as it feels like her character is treating the whole adventure as a role play weekend. Joanna Pacula as the crooked DEA agent is strong without being one of the highlights of the film, which is where most of the authority figures fall.

Story – The story here follows four friends that find $50 million of drug money and decide to come up with a plan to escape with the money, with both the drug lords and DEA chasing them down. The story does deal with the unlikely find of fortune which will need a sensible plan to survive, while the two different sides are looking to hunt them down, we do get the attempts of throwing in twists. But they only seem to hold the story down, rather than drive it forward.

Action – The action in the film is chases, with the car chase through the desert being the best of the few we see.

Settings – We are set on an island outside of America, without stating which one it is, with the hints that we are dealing in a world where the drug lords roam the land.

Scene of the Movie – Escape on the boat.

That Moment That Annoyed Me – The Scooby Doo like chase.

Final Thoughts – Break Even is an action film that wants to bring us an edgy side, with the twists in the story, only to end up being by the book and filled with comical behaviour along the way.