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Backtrace was directed by Brian A. Miller, written by Mike Maples, and stars Matthew Modine, Ryan Guzman, Meadow Williams, Tyler Jon Olson, Colin Egglesfield, Christopher McDonald, and Sylvester Stallone. It follows a bank robber after he is sprung out of prison, tasked with finding the loot years after it all went down.

The Plot: Some plots are prohibited from ever reaching greatness because of their formulaic or otherwise predictable elements and structure. Maples, despite tossing a few half-decent ideas together, doesn’t even come close with this plodding, threadbare narrative.

After a bank heist that we don’t see, Mac (Modine) encounters some goons waiting to take the score, resulting in his cohorts’ deaths and his own injury. In what could’ve been an interesting point for this story of lost memory, Backtrace stays within cliche territory, using a bag full of cash as the incentive. Right after waking from his coma, he’s sent to prison for seven years – a brutal reawakening, where he meets Lucas (Guzman), who springs him out with too much ease and gives him an ill-defined experimental memory enhancer with the assistance of Erin (Williams) and Farren (Olson), who go on the hunt for the lost cash.

As the foursome search for the money, which is complicated by the unforeseen effects of the drug, the movie introduces the law’s side of things, as FBI agent Franks (McDonald) and detective Sykes (Stallone, collecting a check) try to put the pieces together in parallel; this isn’t much of a subplot though, since Franks and Sykes only occasionally do anything aside from theorizing by a whiteboard. Instead, they send detective Carter (Egglesfield) to find them before they get what they were looking for.

Before anything can develop, Backtrace succumbs to repeated actions and beats while the different parties threaten to enter the same location and potentially generate some kind of conflict.

The Characters: Fleshing out characters in full is something that can be avoided in a mystery movie, but taking personality as a suggestion is unadvisable in almost any circumstance. That’s the approach here, and it doesn’t work.

Mac had a family at one point or another and turned to being a criminal after his pension was severed. Maples doesn’t go into any kind of detail with this basic background, but it’s easy to feel sympathy for him due to that and the constant pain he’s in due to the memory enhancer. Modine tries to pull something out of nothing, giving a performance with far more emotion than Backtrace deserves, but it’s a thankless effort.

Lucas is a guy who knows a lot about Mac and will do whatever it takes to fix his memory. Money is a universal motivation, but again, Miller and Maples refuse to go anywhere that requires more than the bare minimum. That goes for the support as well, with Erin and Farren’s only characterization being the former’s career as a nurse, and the latter’s lowlife activities.

Authority figures are equally underwritten, as Carter is a bland strait-laced cop. Sykes is a senior version of the same concept, although he’s not very competent; having been working on the case for seven years and coming up with nothing. Franks is a typical shady FBI agent that adds little to the overarching film, however, that doesn’t defy expectation, since no one aside from Mac has the slightest bit of shading.

The Mystery: Questions are raised early in Backtrace, and most of them are at least semi-interesting, but sustaining intrigue in the primary plot point isn’t something Miller delivers here. While the script doesn’t back him up, his direction of the picture could have.

Carving a critical moment out of Mac’s head is decently executed; the harried robbers are turned on while trying to escape the search party, which is an already confusing situation, but things get worse when Mac gets shot in the head and left unattended to for several hours. In addition, Lucas, Erin, and Farren really want the money, going so far as using an unproven technology on their tracker to get it. While it kind of works, it frazzles Mac’s mind, who works through mental blockages to bring his emancipators where they need to go, creating a potentially complicated and engaging obstacle.

Unfortunately, the script isn’t able to follow up on the promise, as Maples does little to hide clues to the location of the cash, or anything else that’s a supposed mystery (I.e., Mac’s betrayers). Neither does Miller, who opens Backtrace on the location where the money is, ruining any chance for the audience to identify with Mac’s journey. Said journey is again dented, as the movie doesn’t travel anywhere, sticking to open fields and an abandoned processing plant. It meanders instead of ratcheting, and the details are broad instead of minute.

Missing another opportunity, Miller does nothing with the seven-year gap in the movie’s events, opting to push every year under the rug on behalf of Sykes and Carter, whose actions don’t befit those of people working on the same case for the better part of a decade. Halfhearted attempts are made to cast doubt on Franks and the federal search, but everything is too obvious, even McDonald, who gives the only other acceptable performance; Miller just doesn’t reign him in. Any amount of thespian control by the director probably wouldn’t matter regardless since every mystery has a blatant answer.

The Technics: B-movies with A-tier aspirations are easy to forgive, but largely hard to watch, depending on the aptitude of the people behind the camera. Miller cracks under the pressure of limited time and budget, creating a bland to bad feature.

Looks and locations are extremely limited, even within the principal characters’ search, as the subplots dealing with the cops are confined to a small number of rooms. Almost certainly a monetary measure, which doesn’t have the benefit of creative cinematography from Peter Holland, despite the porous factory location. That, together with a significant lack of color in the feature makes it easy to succumb to terminal boredom.

Some ADR is very clear too, when Erin talks in the factory her words barely match her lips. Modine tried to show Mac’s physical and mental anguish, Miller doesn’t know what to do, adding a terribly annoying screen shake to every one of Mac’s recollections. Flashbacks are already color corrected to look (even more) grey, and the shots in the same area make the difference in time clear. Miller doesn’t trust his audience and just wants to piss them off.

Much like most of Miller’s movies, Backtrace does the bare minimum with its concept. While not original to begin with, some pizzazz, pacing, rewriting, and technical details would’ve made this enjoyable. Everything but Modine and bare minimum filmmaking is scrambled in Miller’s incapable hands.

34/100