The movie’s title says it all.

Brut Force is about a journalist investigating harassment of Latin grape harvesters working in her former home town. Her step-father owns 1 of the 2 vineyards in the town. The journalist left town years ago because her mother, a drug addict, relapsed, then died. Her harvesting friends contact the writer and ask her help in discovering who is trying to push the workers out of town.

Sounds like a reasonable setup, doesn’t it? It’s an indie film, but it looks nice, the lead actress is not a joke, and it’s not another comic book movie.

The problems: (1) it is full of itself and (2) a setup with a half-assed resolution is a premature climax.

When I saw the title on my screen, I saw they had misspelled “Brute.” The title is “Brut.” There is an “e” at the end of “brute.” As I watched it unfold (or unravel, take your pick), I realized it was a smug reference to the film’s California wine-country setting. Brut (pronounced BRUT and NOT
BRUTE, although that repugnant aftershave from 30 years ago claimed that was the pronunciation) is the driest Champagne. I know Champagne, so I know this. 98 percent of the audience for this thing won’t have a fucking clue; but, hey!, the filmmakers are giddy with their cleverness.

I could also point out that California cannot legally call their wine product Champagne. Champagne ONLY comes from
the Champagne district in France. Period. Exclamation point. Elsewhere on Earth can produce sparkling wine—Methode Champanoise—but it ain’t Champagne. So the allegedly clever filmmakers did not do
their homework.

The narrative itself is slow and boring. It has the guy from MTV’s Teen Wolf driving around in a Porsche. His mother is the dame who played Anok-Sun-Amon in the only good Mummy movies. There is no “suspense,” only confusion. There are NO “thrills” AT ALL. The “action” (brute force?) consists of about 40 seconds of the journalist bitch-slapping around a toothpick of an alleged man who was trying to slash her tires.

And that’s it.