Review: 'Dead Mine' - Yamashita Treasure Hunting Gone Wrong

I found out about this movie a few weeks ago as HBO Asia's debut feature. Today I found this showing on theaters so I took entrance, fully willing, without caution, and for that I congratulate myself. Frankly speaking, I entered the theaters with little faith on my hands and luckily I've had perfectly enough. First-rate production values, expert imagery and stunts and stupendous sound engineering make the movie comparable to a lot of high-end big-budget Hollywood productions, but as the story progresses, it becomes perfectly understandable if you start to swallow a cold vast of air and snore out loud.

In Dead Mine, rumor has it that the legendary treasures of Yamashita lies within a Japanese military bunker erected on a Singaporean gulf - nope, not under the seas of the Philippines, my friends - so a couple of treasurers fare to the destination. Treasure hunting in an action-horror, you say? I think we all know what's going to happen next, don't we? Which did. The treasure hunt, lead by a conventionally stubborn rich traveler (Les Loveday), will have and has gone terribly wrong. As it turns out, the bunker has been venue to inhumane activities that lead its previous settlers to insanity and physical deformation. Our treasurers, as they fare inside, will have their own share of ordeal, each in their surprisingly impressive means of demise.

Director and co-writer Steven Sheil has quite a story to tell, whilst already familiar (on the movies defense: we don't get a lot of historical fiction about the Yamashita treasure, do we?), is clipped to the ground when it decides to hold on its genre's cliches. The movie is bugged down with its shortcomings in pacing, characterization and narrative. I don't expect this much from HBO though, this quality of a film is very rare to these kind of a studio's work. If the movie's unjustifiably draggy pace is worked with, if characters weren't dominated by black-and-white types, if the narrative is more tight, then the movie could have become pleasing. It's a task but it's workable, and I feel down that the movie didn't worked these things out.

Carmen Soo gave justice to her throwaway role as the luminous girlfriend of Price, the stubborn rich kid. Miki Muzuno, who plays researcher Rie, has been given a role that has quite a characterization and depth consequently she's had quite something to work with. The Raid: Redemption's Joe Taslim (who is embraced by Hollywood, tapped to nab a role in the upcoming chapter of the Fast and Furious) is a delight on screen and has got to be the best actor among the cast. Others are perfectly serviceable to keep the film moving. 

Occasionally, the movie is scary, most of the time the frights just reach tepid. If you could work with that, you have nothing to worry about.

Dead Mine screams to be watched at the comfort of your home. This B-movie is spectacularly impressive in terms of quality, only a few tweaks and this becomes a gem. B