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Not as tawdry as the box art and S & M insinuations of the synopsis may suggest, but still an enjoyable little indie crime film.

In Robert Cuffley’s film Walk All Over Me, Alberta ( Leelee Sobieski) is a very unlucky girl who is forced to flee the small town she’s always known when her own clumsiness loses money her boyfriend needs to pay off a debt to a drug dealer.  She leaves him in their clutches, hitching a ride on a bus to Vancouver.

The big city unknown to her, she looks up the only person she knows there, Celene (Trisha Helfer), a woman who used to babysit her as a child.  Celene is not thrilled to have her show up on her doorstep, but reluctantly agrees to let her stay for a few weeks until she gets on her feet.  Celene is doing very well for herself as a high paid dominatrix, and doesn’t need Alberta underfoot cramping her posh lifestyle.

Alberta manages to find a job in a supermarket, doing much the same thing she was back home.  She finds herself alone at the house and in an amusingly childish moment, decides to play dress up in some of Celene’s bondage gear, but of course manages to ruin it in the recurring theme of her being a giant klutz.

The supermarket job paying so poorly, it will take forever to replace the item for Celene, so Alberta decides to try and screen through the various ‘audition’ tapes sent to Celene for the least creepy guy, thinking she can arrange a meeting as Celene and make some quick cash.

Paul (Jacob Tierney) meets her at the food court of the mall where she puts him through some mild demands, but manages to persuade her to accompany him home for another session of more serious domination.  The lure of extra money is too great to resist, and as they’re just getting into his role as a dog, they’re rudely interrupted by Paul’s boss Rene, a vengeful club-owner who thinks Paul has stolen a goodly sum of money from him.

Rene and his two goons toss the house, and work Paul over pretty well, only finding a bag containing $20,000, not the half million they’ve come looking for. Alberta makes a run for it in the confusion, snatching the bag of money on her way out, leaving Paul in what she thinks is possibly a coma and at the mercy of three thugs.  She steals his car and hides the money back at Celene’s house, trying to play it cool and pay her back, then go to work like nothing happened.  She returns home to find Rene waiting for her, and when she is at his mercy she is saved by Celene herself, who shows her the type of violence a real dominatrix can be capable of.

The girls are now stuck with Rene as a prisoner, the problem of what to do with him, and figuring out who really took his money in the first place.

I enjoyed the film, it’s a quick watch and the characters all seem fairly well-drawn, from Alberta’s scatterbrained clumsiness and her immediate rapport with Paul, to Celene’s no-nonsense businesswoman put upon by having to include someone else in her life, the film moves quickly from point ‘A’ to point ‘B’ and has some laughs along the way.  Both female leads look good in their leather outfits, but anyone hoping for some gratuitous nudity will be disappointed, as all this film offers is a little cleavage to titillate between scenes of the thugs working people over. 

The DVD features a decent array of extras, with a commentary track featuring leads Sobieski and Helfer alongside director Cuffley, a single deleted scene, and a behind the scenes segment that runs a little over 15 minutes.  Rounding things out is a reel of about five minutes worth of outtakes, a still gallery, the film’s trailer and a video for the song Safety Word, which is featured in the film.

Walk All Over Me has several amusing moments, most of them involving one of the submissives who becomes involved in the proceedings.  It’s an amiable little timewaster if you’re in the mood for a light dramedy.  Give it a rental.

4