Skip to content

Police Drama

JESSE

(DVD and Digital; ARC ENTERTAINMENT (86 minutes/Rated R); produced 2011, released 2014)

Jesse 2D

JESSE is the story of a troubled cop seeking peace in a bottle… actually, several bottles. She has recently returned home only to become the third cog in a severely dysfunctional family wheel, alongside her dope smoking (and very loud) mother and her dope selling (and very large) brother. When her brother goes missing – except for a foot – Jesse (played to the “Jersey Jewish Princess” hilt by Stephanie Finochio, a former professional wrestler known as Trinity) seeks retribution on the Mafia types who she believes killed him because he owed them more than ten thousand dollars in gambling debt. Along the way, she meets several dubious characters and an even greater number of dubious bottles of booze. Eric Roberts shows up (as he is wont to do) as a sympathetic bartender who recognizes Jesse from a news report about her walking into a market (or a liquor store… who knows with her) in the middle of a robbery. The bad guys yell at her; she doesn’t care for that, so… she shoots them, becoming an instant hero. Of course, she has sex with the bartender.

JESSE (Stephanie Finochio) (publicity still)
JESSE (Stephanie Finochio) (publicity still)

After threatening the mob guys with various kinds of pain and suffering, she goes home to find that her mother has been savagely beaten. Her next stop? A gun store where she purchases an over-the-counter cure for her problems: A sawed-off shotgun. After a series of strange sidetracks that muddle the plot and do nothing to move the story along, Jesse finds out about a meeting of several of the racketeers she believes are responsible for the discomfort recently visited upon her brother and mother (and ex-dog). Upon arriving at the scene, she discovers… her brother (minus one foot – in a brilliant strategical move, he amputated his own foot as part of a moneymaking scheme to sell his product at sports memorabilia shows, disguised as collectible baseball cards). Brother Mitchell (played by bad actor Mitchell Walters, swimming in a rancid cesspool of bad actors) is busy scamming the crew he used to scam the guys that wanted him dead… but, that was all a scam, too. Guess who gets the first shotgun blast from Jesse. So now, Mitchell has a hole in him almost as big as the plot of this film.

A JESSE gallery (Tamara Markowitz; Richard Lampese, Anthony Trentacosta and Dave M Lipsky; Stephanie Finochio and Michael Wright) (publicity stills)
A JESSE gallery (Tamara Markowitz; Richard Lampese, Anthony Trentacosta and Dave M Lipsky; Stephanie Finochio and Michael Wright) (publicity stills)

It all sounds like fun, huh? Yeah… it’s all fun and games ’til someone loses a foot. Or until you have to sit through JESSE. To be fair, I really wanted to like this movie… the premise sounded so promising. So, thinking that I may be wrong or having a bad day or whatever, I asked a friend to watch JESSE, too. He made it through less than five minutes before shutting the thing off, declaring, “You’re kidding, right? I can’t handle any more of this screeching. It’s like watching JERSEY SHORE. Except those people were less annoying.” I don’t know; I guess somewhere there’s somebody who’s gonna watch this thing and think it’s the greatest flick they’ve ever seen. Maybe Snooki, if she gets her ADD under control. Wait… that’s it! Everybody involved in this movie obviously suffers from ADD and were off their meds! No, that theory doesn’t fly because Eric Roberts, Armand Assante and William Forsythe (generally fine actors if they’re given a decent script) are in it. Okay… I got it: Everybody but those three suffers from ADD; Assante, Forsythe and Roberts were paid truckloads of money to appear in an attempt to class up the proceedings. But, even they shoulda realized that you can’t shine a turd. No matter how hard you rub, you just end up getting it all over your hands. And on your resume. If you must watch, please place all sharp objects out of your reach. That way, you won’t be tempted to jab things in your eyes or ears to make JESSE go away.