Matty looks at the good and the bad in the runt of Anthony Hickox’s Armand Assante litter.

Like predecessors the Last Run (2001) and Federal Protection (2002), CONSEQUENCE – the third and final Armand Assante flick in the five-strong Anthony Hickox/Steve Beswick/David Lancaster continuum [1] – features the almighty sight of the star in a ludicrous wig.

In his previous Hickox assignments, Assante essayed a jaded merc and a car thief turned snitch. Here the scene-chewing Gotti (1996) titan is really encouraged to pout and brood in a juicy dual role of sorts, that of Sam Tyler: a down-on-his-luck quack, ruined by a high profile accusation of malpractice, who assumes the identity of his very rich and supposedly very dead twin brother in order to collect a $3million windfall. However, as Tyler soon discovers, duping the insurance investigators was the easy part… 

A scheming ex-wife (Nadia Kretschmer).

A duplicitous girlfriend (Lola Glaudini).

Blackmail.

Arms deals.

The CIA.

A crime syndicate.

And a whole host of other bits and bobs that, curiously, alternate between sloppily sketched and wildly overplayed.

Consequence’s chaotic – if engaging – plot bears the scars of what it is: the first produced work of neophyte writers who shoved everything they could into their script, lest they never get the chance to do it again. Such apprehension seems ridiculous in retrospect. Post Consequence, Hawk Ostby and Mark Fergus went on to pen Children of Men (2006), Iron Man (2008), and Cowboys & Aliens (2011) – the latter especially interesting given Hickox’s own brush with the space western, on unaired TV pilot Martian Law (1998).

Initially coming across in the same noir-ish manner as Payback (1995), Consequence quickly outs itself as Hickox’s fruitiest and most experimental movie. Though his tricksy, bluff/double bluff approach to storytelling is hindered by hard to follow exposition, this wild and deliberately showy opus houses a multitude of bold directorial choices – the biggie being Hickox’s decision to keep Assante’s face hidden until the twenty minute mark, after his character’s plastic surgery to look more like his sibling. A striking visual experience, Hickox – an avowed admirer of fellow sorely missed auteur Tony Scott – goes hell for leather with the blue-black shadows and eye-searing colour filters, to the point where — a la Scott’s Domino (2005) and The Taking of Pelham 123 (2009) — Consequence might give a headache to the unprepared.

Boasting a brilliantly barmy action sequence involving a marauding Volkswagen Beetle, Consequence is one of two films Hickox and Lancaster shot in South Africa for the Motion Picture Corporation of America, preceding the better-known (but far less enjoyable) Blast (2004). It premiered on HBO in July 2003, and landed on U.S. tape and disc in February ‘04 via the network’s home video label.

USA/South Africa/Germany ● 2003 ● Thriller ● 96mins

Armand Assante, Ricky Schroeder (as ‘Rick Schroeder’), Lola Glaudini ● Dir. Anthony Hickox ● Wri. Hawk Ostby & Mark Fergus

[1] A quick recap: The films: The Contaminated Man (2000), Last Run, Federal Protection, Consequence, and Blast. Hickox directed all of them; all were part funded with German cash; Beswick co-produced The Contaminated Man, Last Run, and Federal Protection; Lancaster co-produced Federal Protection, Consequence, and Blast; and Assante headlined Last Run, Federal Protection, and Consequence. Hickox and Assante reunited almost twenty years later, on the still-to-be-released Infamous Six (2020).