Review of The Jammed (2007) by Joern S — 26 Aug 2007

Set in multicultural Melbourne and dealing with the topic of imported sex slaves, ?The Jammed? is being described by the Sydney Morning Herald as "one of the hottest Australian movies of the year (2007)". My perception is a very different one though.

Bad acting ? The film is meant to be a realistic inside view into the horrid and illegal sex slavery scene of Melbourne / Australia. However, almost all actors behave very unrealistic and make their acting just too obvious, which hinders you from really sympathise with one of the characters. The biggest flaw: Crystal (Emma Lung) as Chinese girl. How can it be that a putatively Chinese girl, who "do not speak good English", has a broad Australian accent?

Boring script ? Ashley saves them all! Yeah! The function of Ashley Hudson (Veronica Sywak), a white collar office worker, is to save the sex slaves. Throughout the entire movie she?s being asked three times by various persons to save someone. And every situation looks alike. The little twist towards the end (I don?t wanna spoil it), does not save anything. On top of this, there are tons of scenes that do not fulfil any purpose at all.

Film music ? The film music is pathetic and basically occurs in two extreme forms only - either just merely cheesy or action-like dramatic. In too many scenes the music tries to compensate the lack of a good story or the bad acting.

Don?t get me wrong: I very much appreciate the sujet of the movie for it's well-worth showing and criticising. To my knowledge, the foul business of sex slavery hadn?t been shown before in such an explicit way. However, the form and the content do not match at all.

Two stars for the topic!

Man, if that was one of the best Australian movies this year, I'll stick to foreign films from now on!