Rites of Passage (2012) (aka: The Final Rites) Wes Bentley, Briana Evigan, Christian Slater, Stephen Dorff Movie Review

Rites of Passage (2012)   2/52/52/52/52/5


Christian Slater in Rites of Passage (2012) (aka: The Final Rites)

Jack of All Master of None

Anthropology student Nathan (Ryan Donowho) invites his classmates along with his professor (Stephen Dorff) to come to his parent's ranch for the weekend as it is on the land of a once sacred burial ground and he wants them all to participate in an ancient ritual. But they are not alone as Nathan's drug loving older brother Benny (Wes Bentley) is there and so is his guest, the crazy Delgado (Christian Slater). Needless to say things don't go as planned as the drugs start to fly and a whole lot of crazy goes on.

In one corner we have Stephen Dorff playing the handsome professor who bangs a hot student on the table in the lecture room. In the next corner we have Christian Slater giving us gun carrying whack job with bad hair, bad hat and a bad past he is trying to get revenge on. And the next corner gives us Wes Bentley as a drug doing brother who is stoned for vast amounts of time and has visions of Briana Evigan in sexy tribal Indian gear. And in the final corner we have all this weird ritual stuff going on. And when all these things come together you get a crazy mess which tries to be a jack of all trades and certainly is a master none.

It is sad to say it but despite the familiar names "Rites of Passage" is a mess, throwing us in at the deep-end with a bunch of characters who are barely introduced to us and a narrative which bounces off the walls as it goes all over the place trying to be a bit of everything. It isn't that "Rites of Passage" is clever or complicated as all the building blocks are familiar ones but they are so poorly tossed together that it never comes together.

What this all boils down to is that "Rites of Passage" doesn't work and ends up little more than a few over the top characters and then some poorly written ones which end up anonymous as does the movie as you will have forgotten about it not long after you have watched it even the hilarious performance from Christian Slater as he talks to a toy monkey.


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