Nika & Madison

Directed by Eva Thomas, Nika & Madison follows two friends (Star Slade’s Madison and Ellyn Jade’s Nika) as they’re forced to go on the run after a violent encounter with a police officer. It’s workable subject matter that’s employed to periodically watchable yet mostly underwhelming effect by Thomas, as the filmmaker, armed with her and Michael McGowan’s script, delivers an overly familiar endeavor that contains few wholeheartedly engrossing attributes and elements – with the arms-length atmosphere perpetuated by Jesse Wicklund’s low-rent visuals and an undercurrent of didactic speechifying. (The film’s politics are, in terms of the latter, laughably and aggressively unsubtle.) And while Thomas has admittedly elicited relatively strong performances from her two leads, Nika & Madison’s increasingly lackluster vibe makes it more and more difficult to actually care about the protagonists’ exploits – which does, in the end, confirm the picture’s place as an earnest, well-intentioned misfire.

** out of ****