Directors: Cary Murnion, Jonathan Milott
Writers: Nick Damici, Graham Reznick
Stars: Brittany Snow, Dave Bautista, Arturo Castro
Plot: When a Texas military force invades their Brooklyn neighborhood, 20-year-old Lucy and war veteran Stupe must depend on each other to survive.
Running Time: 94 minutes
Rotten Tomatoes Score: Critics 49% Audience 29%
Why I Watched it: I like Bautista and the plot was interesting.
Random Thoughts: So this film has a gimmick, it’s done in long tracking shots and they try to make it look like just one long tracking shot. Here’s a thing I thought Bautista’s name was Stew and when I see the credits it says Stupe, honestly I heard Stew the whole film.
What I liked: The only reason to watch this film is for Dave Bautista, he’s basically been a secondary guy in his films and this one gives him center stage. I like him as a presence, of a man his size he’s a quiet actor and he acts small. Bautista is also a producer on the film, and it makes sense cause he gets an arc and he gets to be a complex character, he’s not just the muscle in the film. The tracking shot gimmick was fine, it got old fast but I give them credit for doing something different and it was nice for a film not to have a million jump cuts. This does help with the tension and it gives the film a raw feel to it.
What I didn’t like: I’ll stop short of calling this film a mess but man it has a few fatal flaws. Sure the beginning is jaw dropping but once we get into the main plot it’s confusing and really we have no clue of what’s going on and that’s frustrating to no end. We don’t know the stakes, we don’t know what kind of movie this is and we don’t get to know the characters much at all. Here’s the other thing this movie is basically a two hander, Bautista and Snow. Brittany Snow is badly miscast here, she doesn’t have the weight to pull off this role, now I will say her character is not well written but you needed a gritter and harder actress.
The flaw that kills the film is the script and main plot, it’s dumb, sorry but wrapping your head around this plot and also during the third act there’s so many dumb things that people do that it becomes laughable.
Here’s the part that sealed the deal for me, so we follow the two leads trying to get to her grandmother’s house and then to a drop zone so they go to this place and are captured by this gang run by one of the gang member’s mother and they force them to go to this church so they can tell the priest there to meet them at this neighborhood laundry mat so they can meet and join forces. Now I won’t go through the whole scene in the church which also makes little sense, so they tell people and only the two of them get to the laundry mat and literally no one is there, no one then we get the backstory scene of the one character. The whole thing was ham fisted and badly written you just shock your head. Also they get Brittany Snow’s “sister” and man it’s a combo of a bad performance and terrible writing.
Also get your head around a Texas military force invading and trying to take over most of America, just think about it. There’s a scene where they catch a solider and he tells them and us the plan, and how shocked they were that the people were fighting back, these “soliders” were going house to house and killing everyone in them and they were shocked that people fought back.
Final Thoughts: This was a clear case of a gimmick film that had not much else going for it. The acting was sub par, the narrative was down right badly down, the action was nothing special and the film has a very downbeat ending that they did not earn at all.
Rating: 3/10
Movie Burner Entertainment 