"Cardinal Matter" bites off more than it can chew, but is a tasty time nonetheless.
The steadily advancing story focuses on what happens when rural meth cookers in search of raw materials unknowingly steal a defense contractor's experimental supersoldier serum. Those juiced on this stuff can temporarily survive serious injuries, but will suffer brain damage and risk reopening wounds unless administered a second drug - which is not among the serum samples.
The contractor wants the samples back and dispatches a hitman to the small community to clean things up and eliminate loose ends. He's using dangerously high doses of the serum and is becoming psychotic.
If you enjoyed "The Bourne Legacy" and "Limitless," you'll like "Cardinal Matter." Just be prepared to suspend disbelief big time when the body count and its accompanying mayhem reach a level at which any small-town law-enforcement operation would have called in the cavalry. (However, this plot hole is no more of an issue than similar ones in, say, "Wind River" or any episode of "Yellowstone.")
The movie was lensed on location in Dubois, Wyoming, but little use is made of its small-town ambience; "Cardinal Matter" could have been shot anywhere. Locals do seem to have been used as extras in a couple of scenes.
We're not getting Anthony Hopkins and Meryl Streep here, but performances aren't bad and the young leads are likeable. Matthew Stannah is especially good as the drug-enhanced hitman, delivering a disturbing performance right up there with Andrew Robinson's Scorpio in "Dirty Harry."
One area in which "Cardinal Matter" seriously stumbles is that director Medeline Puzzo and writer Thomas Arthur Major introduce some potentially useful sci-fi elements but don't pursue them fully.
Overall, however, the movie is enjoyable and has the comfortable feel of an "X-Files" episode in which Mulder and Scully never show up.
