While traveling on their first American tour, Ms. 45, an all-girl punk band, is drugged and kidnapped. They awaken to find their limbs removed and replaced with crude weaponry, and are forced to fight as Gladiators for a sadistic town.
It’s easy to see director Andrew Thomas Hunt was heavily influenced by George Miller’s Mad Max films. Everything about “Spare Parts” screams post-apocalyptic societal collapse but the problem here is that the events of his movie take place in the present, in the middle of Nowhere, USA, not some futuristic desert landscape, and that is why the movie fails. We are led to believe that a cult operating out of a tiny midwestern town is able to successfully kidnap tourists and any unfortunate people who just happen to pass through their vicinity, cut off their arms and replace them with weapons so that they can face off against each other in a Gladiator-style arena fight to the death, to appease the Blood Gods.
Granted, in every film, we have to suspend a certain amount of disbelief, especially for a movie like this but even within the confines of its own story, there has to be a level of believability in order for the audience to go along with it but here, there is no plausibility so the story and the characters cease to exist and assume the form of caricatures instead. The over-the-top violence and exaggerated scenarios seem more fitting for an animated feature than a live-action one, and personally, that’s the route I feel this movie should have taken.
After an all-female rock band, Ms. 45, finishes playing at a rowdy bar in the middle of nowhere, they are run off the road and kidnapped. When they awaken, each of them has had an arm severed and replaced with death-slaying weapons, where they are anointed as gladiators by a strange cult led by The Emperor (Julian Richings), who worships the Blood Gods. They are then thrown into an arena and forced to fight other gladiators to the death, where the blood spilled will appease the gods. As the girls become more skilled in their fighting abilities, they plan their escape but when they are forced to fight each other, they must reassess their situation and plan a new strategy.
“Spare Parts” desperately wants to be on the same level as Mad Max and “Gladiator” but misses the mark in every respect. At one point in the film, one of the girls is being trained by Driller (Ryan Allen), a combatant who has been with the cult for a long time, and he begins to give what I’m sure would have been a rousing pep talk, telling her how strong she is and how proficient she will become, similar to what Russell Crowe does in “Gladiator” when trying to inspire his fellow comrades when facing insurmountable odds, but she cuts him off mid-speech and tells him to shut up, reminding him that she didn’t choose this life. It’s the only moment in the movie that made me chuckle because she was absolutely right, they are not in Roman times, getting ready to fight in the Colosseum, it is present-day USA, and the line actually makes the film’s narrative even more laughable.
In the end, director Andrew Thomas Hunt deserves props for getting his film made, especially in today’s day and age. He empowers his four leading ladies with grit and determination, never once putting them in a scenario where they have to rely on a man to rescue them and this element is commendable. His inspiration, from Mad Max, “Gladiator,” and any other number of 1980s barbarian-themed movies, such as “1990: Bronx Warriors,” “Metalstorm: The Destruction of Jared-Syn,” and “Exterminators of the Year 3000,” to name but a few, is undeniable but a lack of character development and story progression undermines what Hunt was obviously aiming for. And what exactly he was aiming for, only he knows!
Available on Blu-ray, DVD, Digital, and VOD June 1st
