“Torture porn” has become quite the buzzphrase for horror movies , allowing one to to summarize and dismiss a film simultaneously. I won’t argue that there aren’t a lot of films that deserve such disdain, but I’m reluctant to endorse the writing off of any genre in its entirety. I’m not into it personally because I grew up on a friendlier, warmer form of cinematic torture that mostly involved action films. Electric torture. Stringing up somebody and pummeling them for days. Drowning. You know, kind of like the U.S. government these past few years.

I have a feeling we’ll be seeing a lot more of that in Tortured, which works already based on the title alone. No fancy pants high concepts here, buddy. This is a film about an FBI agent who goes undercover in a crime syndicate. Along the way, he’s compelled to torture on of their accountants. That’s it. Cole Hauser plays the agent and Laurence Fishburne is the accountant, which should be cake given his experience looking very worked over while bound to a chair in The Matrix. Make no mistake, this is a small flick in every sense of the word being that:

A) They just cast the leads and start shooting next week.
B) It’s shooting in Vancouver.
C) Cole Hauser is starring this.

Hopefully, Cole can reprise his “rat chewing his way through a guy’s stomach” party trick from 2 Fast 2 Furious. I’m sure they have a lot of unfinished business left over from their first pairing in Higher Learning.