For Castletoooon!
Axcellerator is the tale of a young car thief, Dane, who in the middle of trying to lift a vehicle after his father's funeral gets carjacked himself by a Cloud Cuckoolander Scientist who is on the run from the government. When it seems that Dane is about to die in a shoot-out, the scientist gives Dane a strange device that enables him to instantaneously teleport back to his home in New York.
Dane promptly uses the device to escape his landlord, accidentally kidnapping a retail worker named Kate and dragging her back to New York with him. And then the device breaks. Now Dane is stuck with a teleporter that doesn't work... and now Dane's got a brutal hired mercenary, Brink, played by Sam J. Jones on his trail trying to get it back and leave no witnesses. Meanwhile, government spy Amanda (played by Sean Young) and CIA head Ray Moritz (played by Maxwell Caulfield) are trying to make sure the device goes to them instead, the latter to destroy it, the former for reasons unknown.
David Giancola's latest film to date after a nearly 8 year gap between his usual Direct to Video fare, he finally released it as a video on demand title through Amazon. In addition, the film also wound up in the hands of Rifftrax, who offered it to their fans as a free stream for 48 hours. The film was presented without their trademark jokes but they also asked their fans to respond if they would like to see it added to their existing library of Edgewood Entertainment and David Giancola Alternate DVD Commentary tracks.
This Film provides examples of:
- Alone with the Psycho: How both Kate's boss and Louie end up with Brink, who even slowly tortures Louie during their encounter. Neither survive.
- Artistic License – Geography: Even accounting for the fact that Brink and Sy seem to have access to plane transportation, they are able to cover vast distances in the United States in a fraction of the time required. For just one example, we're introduced to Brink when he meets with Sy at Area 51 in Nevada. The same morning, he's already in Tucson, Arizona interviewing Kate's boss. This is 7 hours minimum of car transport. Even a plane wouldn't have covered the 500 mile distance fast enough to still be morning when he arrived. Then within the same day he's able to move from Arizona to New York City, a gap of 2500 miles, and still show up the same day.
- Related, but the movie isn't terribly concerned with time zones - it's always the same time of day no matter where the characters are, even if they're several states or even countries apart.
- A-Team Firing: Dane and Kate get through a massive amount of shootouts without a single scratch on them. The cars often get shot, but the passengers are somehow uninjured.
- Bland-Name Product: Kate works for Valmart.
- Bond One-Liner: Sy drops one on Moritz after he dies from drinking poisoned brandy.
"You really ought to go easy on that hard stuff friend, it's a killer."
- Apparently proud of himself for the first one, he turns to Amanda in the car with him and delivers basically the same joke again.
"You know that man... really can't hold his liquor."
- Chekhov's Gun: Two! First the bottle of alcohol Sy gives to Moritz, then later when Meg keeps a camping knife after she and Dane spend a night under the stars.
- Corrupt Corporate Executive: Sy, who paid for the creation of the Axcellerator and wears his evil on his sleeve. He doesn't even hide from the CIA that he's hired a psycho killer to get his device. He also just up and poisons the CIA head.
- Covers Always Lie: The Axcellerator is shown as green and crackling with lightning on the poster, but the film and trailer just show a little thing with some cheap blue LED lights inside.
- Damsel in Distress: Kate for the entire last half hour of the movie, used to motivate Dane to hand over the Axcellerator. Then she breaks out of it by killing Brink with a throwing knife by tricking him into getting close enough for her to use it.
- Die Laughing: It should not come as a surprise that Brink, a character that spends most of the movie with a maniacal grin on his face anyway, laughs as he dies from a lethal knife wound.
- Dull Surprise: Amanda pretty much never reacts to anything for the entire movie. Not because the character is cold or unemotionless, but because almost the entirety of Sean Young's role is either sitting in a car with a phone to her ear or standing on a porch with a phone to her ear. It is painfully obvious she only did the role
for the paycheck. - Establishing Shot: The film obviously doesn't have the budget to fly to all the various locations they claim to be in, so there's always a few of these. It's generally not a big deal except for when they try to greenscreen new locations anyway.
- Evil Feels Good: Sy just straight up admits he loves being evil when Kate calls him out on it.
- Extremely Short Time Span: The movie appears to take place over about two days, given we see one actual evening go by. This is in spite of the fact that the non-teleporting characters appear to be able to cover vast distances in just one day.
- False Reassurance: Brink promises to Louie that he'll let him go. Unfortunately for Louie, Brink considers Louie being dead to be freedom.
- He also pulls this with Dane and Kate later in the movie, pretending to agree to let Kate go... but then sticks a bomb onto the locked gondola he sends her down the mountain on and putting a five minute timer on it.
- Faux Affably Evil: Sy likes to present a charming exterior and a noble motivation, but he's absolutely cutthroat.
- Jerk Ass Victim: It's hard to feel bad for Kate's boss getting taken out by Brink. On top of being an idiot, he also suggests she let her dog die for the sake of her job and suggests she needs to find a man to take care of. Probably the only person Brink kills that you feel zero remorse for.
- Karmic Death: Sy getting abandoned far from civilization in the middle of the Sahara desert, with the kiss-off line of "I'm ridding the world of evil Sy, just like you promised."
- Laughing Mad: Brink always has a maniacal smile and loves to laugh while tormenting people.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Dane pretty much immediately does this as the scientist did not tell him how it worked and after just two uses it seems to burn out, stranding Kate in his apartment with him almost 3000 miles away from her actual home. He's called out on this pretty much immediately by Kate and again by the scientist.
- One Last Job: The film opens with Dane trying to steal an SUV. We later learn that the reason was because the SUV's owner shot and killed his father when he tried to steal it and Dane wanted to steal the car just to get back at him.
- MacGuffin: The titular Axcellerator as it spends most of the movie broken and only turns on when the plot requires. It's more important as an object that the villains are willing to kill to acquire than as something the protagonists make use of.
- Made of Explodium: When the empty gondola falls to the ground after the bomb had already exploded, the burnt out metal frame then explodes a second time with even more fire than it did when an actual explosive went off.
- Magic Countdown: The bomb on Kate's gondola, with so many shots on the bomb that it becomes almost comical.
- Perfect Poison: The one inside of the bottle of alcohol that Max drinks from. After Max dies from it, Brink laughs about it being completely undetectable, ensuring Max's death would be taken as a heart attack.
- Pre-Mortem One-Liner: Brink to poor hapless Louie.
"I'm going to let you go if you can help me with one more thing I need... I want you to look like you've been shot in the head." bang
- Reformed Criminal: Dane is a recovered car thief, as carjacking was his family's business.
- Tampering with Food and Drink: Sy likes to hand out a... harder... kind of liquor than most.
- Too Dumb to Live: Kate's boss at Valmart has a giant crazy man in front of him that just assembled a lethal crossbow in the store and is pointing it at him and he just wastes his time lecturing him on store policies instead.
- It has to be said that given that Moritz knows Sy is not above murdering lots of people to get what he wants that perhaps accepting a bottle of alcohol from him and then drinking from it is not a smart move.
- Travelling at the Speed of Plot: While the main characters have a teleporter, the characters that don't would appear to have the power to teleport can cover vast distances anyway so they can show up at just the right time. Brink in particular seems to appear at times that he really shouldn't be able to.
- Whole Costume Reference: Dane spend about half the movie in the distinctive Castleton shirt expected of a very meme-aware David Giancola.
- The third act, in addition to quite clearly being filmed in the Killington Ski Lodge that Icebreaker took place in, also has Dane wearing "Ski Bum" Matt's rescue jacket.
- Wilhelm Scream: During the second car chase, when Dane's vehicle goes flying down a hill in a tight alley.
