A better title for this film would be "No Country for Smart Men". It has too much dumb storytelling and not nearly enough sex and violence. What White Rush does have going for it is that it fully embraces the friend of all dubiously talented filmmakers. This movie is fast paced and things move at such a rapid clip that even the most absurd turns of the plot pass by so quickly that they're easy to forgive. If there had been a lot more nudity or a lot more violence, preferably both, this would have been one of those stupid action flicks worth watching. Lacking that, this is a "move along, nothing to see here" production.
A group of five friends is out in the woods for some sort of annual vacation just as a drug deal is going down nearby. The deal goes bad and only one drug dealer, Brian (Judd Nelson), is left alive. One of the friends, a cop named Chick (Louis Mandylor), hears the gunfire and goes to investigate. He misses Brian but finds the cash and the cocaine, which he takes and convinces 3 of his friends that they should keep the money and sell the cash to get even richer. The fourth, Eva (Tricia Helfer), decides she can't be a part of it and runs off, where she then gets captured by the wounded Brian. As Chick comes up with an increasingly idiotic plan to sell the coke, Brian and Eva essentially team up to
well, Eva pretty much just leaves messages on her friends' answering machines. Meanwhile, a Mexican drug lord sends in a beautiful assassin (Sandra Vidal) to retrieve his drugs and kill everyone connected to their theft. Will Chick's harebrained scheme work? Will Brian and Eva discover that it's possible to drive to someone's house and talk to them directly? Will the assassin complete her mission before she runs out of ludicrously sexy outfits? You don't need to know the answer to any of those questions.
Some films will have seemingly stupid things happen and then some revelation at the end explains the reason for it all. White Rush has a lot of stupid things happen and then the revelation at the end makes them all even stupider. If you get to the big reveal in this film and can figure out the character in question's plan all along, you're a better man than I am, Gunga Din. For an example of the dumb storytelling on display here, I can do no better than to point out that Chick's plan for selling the coke hinges on him basically walking up to a notorious LA drug lord, identifying himself as a cop and asking "Do you want to buy some cocaine"? And the drug lord responds with "Sure. When a policeman offers to sell me drugs, what could possibly go wrong?"
The edge of moronitude is dulled by the speed at which director Mark L. Lester has everything running. Scenes are short and crisp. Dialog, even at its cretinous worst, is brief and to the point. Probably 75% of all films and 99% of bad films would benefit from being quicker in all things and White Rush is a great example of that. Unfortunately, while there's also two sex scenes and several shootings, a movie like this needs way more bare flesh and bloody bodies to completely distract the audience from how crappy it is.
I do want to point out that the best thing here is Louis Mandylor's portrayal of Chick. He does a really good job of embodying the reality that bad guys are always "the hero" in their own minds. Because he's a cop and he thinks he has good intentions, Chick operates as though those two things elevate him above all other moral or ethical concerns. Mandylor is so convincing that projecting that attitude that it's hard not to forget that Chick is the main source of everyone else's problems. None of the other actors rise above the material like that, though they're all perfectly acceptable besides Ivo Cutzardia playing the Mexican drug lord like he's doing a bad night club impression of a Mexican drug lord.
If Tricia Helfer had taken her clothes off or the women who did had kept them off a lot longer, if there'd been one or two more full blown action scenes, White Rush might have been the sort of movie you turn off your brain and enjoy. Since none of that occurred, it's not worth flipping that switch.
