Corbin Nash (Movie Review)

By Jake Dee

April 18th 2018, 11:47am

Last Updated on July 30, 2021

PLOT: With his parents victimized by a pair of demonic fallen Angels, brusque police detective Corbin Nash must reconcile with his hereditary fate as a demon hunter and exact bloody revenge!

REVIEW: Immediately looking to have one’s head examined am I, surely so, for embarrassingly including on our list of Top 10 Genre Flicks to see this springtime, the April 20th release of CORBIN NASH. Consider this review one giant mea culpa for such a gross misreading, as this is not only one of the absolute worst theatrically released movies I’ve reviewed at AITH, perhaps more damning, this incomprehensibly muddled mess of a vampiric-neo-noir serves as nothing more than a poor vanity project for its star and co-writer Dean Jagger, and his directorial sibling Ben. Why oh why? With disappointingly dashed hopes of what could have been a fun B-movie reliant on an all-star 80s cast, one that barely includes Corey Feldman, Rutger Hauer, Malcolm McDowell, Courtney Gains and Bruce Davison – I’d honestly rather watch CORBIN BERNSEN in THE DENTIST 2 again than either sit through or even recommend CORBIN NASH. Hell, Nash Bridges Season 6 is bound to be a better time. Avoid at all costs!

But in case you care, we pick up in the glowing-neon of nighttime Los Angeles. A Blind Prophet (McDowell) narrates in a gravelly, over-important tone not unlike a godly Morgan Freeman. He speaks of the darkness, fallen angels who’ve become demons, and how this will interminably affect the life of Corbin Nash (Dean Jagger), a rougish detective hell bent on finding his parents’ murderers. Another man known as The Stranger (Hauer) shows up and spouts more confounding exposition, passing such off to yet another man named Jack (Davison) who knew Nash’s parents when they were alive and well. Turns out a transvestite vamp named Queeny (Corey Feldman, naturally) and his lover Vince (Richard Wagner) were at the very least partially responsible for upending Nash’s world. After an absurd flashback or two, including the most random of boxing-ring sparring session between Nash and a series of others, information comes to light that lets Corbin know he descends from a long lineage of demon hunters. Once he reckons with this tidbit, he straps up with a Negan-leather-coat-and-ball-bat and rides into the night seeking bloody vengeance!

Sadly, there’s an awkward amateuristic albatross hanging around old NASH’s neck the entire time, weighing it down, never allowing for much fun to be had at all. I can’t tell you how much eye-rolling tough talk there is from grown macho men susurrating under their breath in a low-growl as if Bale were in his bat suit. There’s no wonder a few Ray Donovan actors were cast here as well, Nash wants to boast that kind of attitude. Or that of Tom Hardy in BRONSON. Nash can’t ever be that, because Jagger is not close to being on par with those top flight actors who happen to use brute masculinity as a tool, rather than a crutch. Even if he was, even if Jagger convincingly carried himself as a formidable force, the fact he has such weak adversaries in the film only serves to undercut this very brute force Nash is so quick to showcase. I mean, how impressed are we to be when a 70 year old tranny-vamp and his paunchy lover are Nash’s biggest baddies? Not very!

The biggest sin here though is the improper to scant use of its iconic 80s cast members. Courtney Gains, for example, has only a single scene. Hauer, McDowell and Davison have only a few. Worse, their characters are so thoroughly uninspired, so stupidly generic, that they render these once towering actors as a pathetically effete performers desperately clinging to the limelight in any way they can. What a massively squandered opportunity. Only Corey Feldman, perhaps the most shameless of all, as the horribly made-up tramp-vamp drag queen has anything to offer, however ridiculous his beauty-obsessed ghoul comes off as. At least he’s given a chance to a wildly colorful character who’s allowed to express a range of emotions. The others monotonously belt out their lines with a glazed look of disinterest in their eyes. And you can’t really blame them. The script is not only listlessly incoherent and difficult to follow, the dialogue is not only staggeringly phony, the story itself is nothing but a dopily derivative regurgitation of stuff we’ve seen executed far better for far longer. Corbin Nash, Demon Hunter? More like Corbin Nash, Semen Sucker!

To be clear, no one was expecting the world with CORBIN NASH. That said, I did hold hope it would be a fun, violent, entertaining 80s inspired B-movie with a cool cast of iconic actors we all grew up watching. Not the case. CORBIN NASH can’t even achieve mindless dumb fun. Actually, as I see it, the single most impressive thing CORBIN NASH has to offer is that it managed to call to mind what I thought was a totally forgettable movie when I reviewed it back in 2009. Yes, if any comparison is to be made, CORBIN NASH reminded me most of THE BLEEDING, which also wasted whatever remaining talent lied dormant in Michael Madsen, Vinnie Jones and Armand Assante. CORBIN NASH, meet THE BLEEDING, y’all deserve each other!