In the realm of straight-to-video, almost more than anywhere else in the movie business, ironically, topicality and zeitgeist matter. The margins are thinner, so being able to reliably turn out a particular genre “base” is quite important; there’s not the muscle of a $35 million-plus P&A budget to bail you out. Ergo, in these troubled times in which the term “bad guy” remains somewhat vague and shadowy, enter Tortured, a moral-quandry suspense drama about the psychological fraying of an undercover cop as he works a domestic underworld case.

Going by the name Jimmy Vaughn, a young, ambitious war veteran and FBI agent (Cole Hauser) undertakes a mission infiltrating a long-established underworld gang run by a mysterious, Keyser Soze-like figure named Ziggy, who has evaded the federal government for decades. Despite the warnings of caution from his bureau chief father Jack (James Cromwelll), Vaughn feels he has the strength and skills to take Ziggy down. What he doesn’t expect is the brutal initiation rites into Ziggy’s grim, violent, paranoid world. After enduring beatings and interrogations to prove trustworthy and gain admittance, Vaughn receives his task — to extract information via torture from Ziggy’s kidnapped accountant Archie Green (Laurence Fishburne), whom Ziggy alleges stole money from him.

From here, Vaughn’s double life starts to truly unravel. Already beset by doubts, his longtime girlfriend Becky (Emmanuelle Chriqui, displaying a fleeting bit of side-boob) leaves him, and the FBI psychiatrist (Kevin Pollack) he’s seeing recommends aborting the mission. Still, Vaughn plugs ahead. Horrific twists and unknown old alliances finally emerge as he dives deeper into the criminal underbelly, leading to a grim finale with lasting consequences for all involved.

Tortured is written and directed by Nolan Lebovitz (Dr. Benny, a 2003 “gynecological comedy” that as best I can determine went undistributed domestically), and it on the surface would seem a fairly disposable and anonymous slice of action drama. The cramped production schedule is evidenced in the tight framing and cramped visual scheme for the film, a lot of the who-knows-what inter-agency scenes early on come across as a bit pat, and the examples by which the movie raises points about the nature of how torture warps those who commit it are fairly boilerplate (post-coital arguments with a teary Becky, nightmarish visions of Archie talking about his family). But the film is also fairly well cast (Jon Cryer and James Denton also have small roles), and peppered with some smart dialogue. It’s ironic that the moral inquiry portion of the movie (and the reason for its double-meaning title) doesn’t play nearly as well as the more traditional, Donnie Brasco-type drama, which is nicely layered. A coiled ball of swallowed feeling, Hauser is so-so in the lead role. Lebovitz, though, effectively surrounds him, and also works in a couple nice twists to keep things lively and engaging.

Housed in a regular Amray case housed in a cardboard slipcover, Tortured comes presented in 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen, with audio tracks in English, Thai, French and Spanish, and a vast array of subtitles in those languages plus Korean and Chinese. The disc’s sole bonus feature is a 19-minute making-of featurette which includes interviews with almost all the chief players, behind-the-scenes and on-screen. Lebovitz makes an articulate case for what interested and inspired him to make the movie in the first place, and Fishburne talks about having done another movie in which he doled out torture (that would be 21, actually), and wanting to experience the other side of the moral equation. To purchase the movie on DVD via Amazon, click here. B (Movie) B- (Disc)