HE NEVER DIED (Jason Krawczyk). 99 minutes. Opens December 18. For venues and times, see movies.nowtoronto.com. Rating: NN
Oddball but hardly inventive, this Toronto-shot U.S.Canada comedy-horror co-pro pits an enigmatic loner with an inordinately long history of violence against a crew of kidnapping dirtbags.
Jack (hardcore legend and Renaissance man Henry Rollins) is a secretly wealthy middle-aged factotum holing up in a tiny apartment. He’s grumpy, reticent and tormented by an inner soundtrack that evokes a Middle Earth battlefield. He’s got lightning reflexes and looks like he works out religiously, but in the film he mostly just sleeps and plays bingo. Does he have PTSD? Migraines? Mysterious scars and an ability to survive seemingly fatal frays with armed idiots suggest that Jack suffers from an affliction of more supernatural origins.
He Never Died spends a lot of time building toward a revelation that’s no reve-lation at all. A love interest and a surprise daughter offset Jack’s brooding, while abundant comic book gore helps kill time, but there’s little else to sustain this otherwise merely serviceable genre twister. Rollins is an inspired casting choice, though.
