A brutally violent, well-made exploitation drama, Donkey
Punch showed up at the Atlantic Film Festival last year but never
got a theatrical release, which is too bad. Given the increasingly
inane and repetitious torture porn pictures getting wide releases and
spawning sequels, there’s no reason this picture couldn’t drum up some
attention from cinema audiences. In it, three lovely but
none-too-bright students from Leeds are on a vacation in Majorca,
Spain.
There they meet four equally thick lads who work on an enormous
luxury yacht. Cue the boat trip and a lovely day on the water,
including swimming, recreational drugs and group sex, leading to the
violent sexual maneuver of the title. Not unexpectedly, further
bloodshed follows in great, gushing quantities, but it’s a credit to
the filmmakers that they manage to rein in the plot developments to at
least the outer realms of plausibility. It would be nice, though, if
there was at least one relatable, likeable person in the movie, or if
the meekest characters weren’t secretly homicidal and/or psychopathic.
The morbid fascination with how it will end and who will be left alive
does hold the interest, even when the boat begins to resemble an
abattoir. It is very hard to look away.
This article appears in May 14-20, 2009.
