Reviews

This film has generated a lot of adverse reviews, mainly because the film makers did not show the reviewer's expert vision of pre-history (gasp!). The film successfully mixes up cultures, geography and legends to bring an adventure story to our screens that may not be Jason and the Argonauts but still manages to entertain if it is accepted for what is is...........a fantasy film! I won't repeat the story line but it makes no less sense than (e.g.) Star Wars, though the dialogue and acting is not particularly polished, and the CGI, excluding the Sabre Toothed Tiger, is most acceptable in the main.

Many have criticised the use of English as the main medium of communication between the characters and the audience. So what if other languages had been spoken then. Do we know them? Would Gladiator have been a better film if Russell Crowe had spoken Latin? There seems to be some double standards here, though I accept than many people with a modern education may not have advanced much beyond the "Ugh Ugh" stage themselves.

A common complain is the use of good English in the film; that is, no modern slang/colloquiums. If proper English is used then more people from around the globe will be able to understand the dialogue. People have also complained of British accents.....well I am English and never heard a single British accent in the film!! Some reviewers have suggested that the film would have been better (and presumably more authentic as the same reviewers complained of historical inaccuracies) if the characters had spoken like Americans! Yes, that would have worked..............the hero talking of the killer-birds: "those darn pesky critters are gonna get their asses' wupped!!" or the hero ordering as he leaves the tribe "Mammoth burger to go, heavy on the mayo".

Suspend your disbelief and give it a go; its just mindless entertainment that can be enjoyed during a relaxing evening.

Alec Guiness is the kindly, but unimaginative, captain of a Royal Navy frigate (HMS Defiant)during the Napoleonic wars engaged in a battle of wills for command of the ship with his brilliant, but sadistic, 1st Lieutenant, wonderfully played by Dirk Bogarde. Their conflict is set amongst a crew endeavouring to get a petition going with a view to righting their grievances and joining in a peaceful mutiny with the rest of the fleet. The leader of the mutineers is played most sympathetically by Anthony Quayle.

The acting talent ensures that the film is always entertaining to watch and the scenes of ships do not suffer from that disease that permeated films of this era where the waves/water-drops are far too big relative to the size of the ships.

The film suffers from many errors and unlikely scenes, e.g. the flagship would have cut her cables and ran on seeing the fire ship heading towards her and no matter how much influence (or 'interest' as it was termed then) the 1st Lieutenant had there is absolutely no way that he could have influenced an examining board to pass the elderly midshipman for lieutenant. In those days when a midshipman faced the examining board he had to produce his sea journals and log book for scrutiny and answer a large number of lengthy and difficult questions on seamanship and navigation. The board was made up of at least three senior captains who were unknown to the midshipman under examination and all three had to agree. This was the only point in an officer's career where 'interest' did not count.

Most officers were not rich and 'posh' as some posts seem to imply; most officers were the sons of sea officers or parsons etc, and were usually very poor. Most would never have received a commission in the army!! The mutinies at the Nore and Spithead were to right grievances the common sailors had (though the leadership at the Nore mutiny seemed to have a different agenda) and largely succeeded. Some of the grievances included regular and increased pay (the sailors pay had not increased in 160 years!!), shore leave and the removal of certain bad officers. However, their grievances did not include the abolition of the cat O' nine-tails or the press gang as most sailors approved of the 'cat'.

The conditions of sailors and the press gang have been much exaggerated over the years, as their conditions compared very favourably with starving landsmen in England and the press could take up only certain kinds of men, and if an officer leading a press gang made a mistake then he could be taken to court and imprisoned, which did happen; consequently officers were very careful who they had pressed. It is estimated that up to 40% were pressed. Contrary to one comment, sailors always received their share of prize money (eventually sometimes!); their share was stated in regulations and if an admiral, captain or admiralty official had refused to hand it over then they would have been tried for theft.

An average film in my opinion, when viewed purely as a war film without bringing an agenda to the table. I am biased I suppose as the characters in this film were very one-dimensional and I prefer war films that explore characters without the full-on action shown here (apart from the frankly boring wives scenes). Although based on a true event, I have to question how realistic this film can be, especially as it stars Mel Gibson, who has made many historically inaccurate films. The reason I question its accuracy is because of the terrible ineptness of the Vietnamise soldiers, whose only tactic seems to be to march in a straight line into automatic fire. The soldier with the bayonet advancing towards Gibson and his group could easily have wiped them out with a burst from his AK47, and the isolated platoon could have been dealt with using grenades or mortars. Instead the Vietnamise advance whilst noisily bunched together and never seem to get off a burst of fire no matter how close they are. Were the Vietnamise soldiers really so bad as shown here? It seemed at times like some rubbishy John Wayne film. This spoiled the film for me in the same fashion that the 'ineptness' of the German soldiers in Where Eagles Dare spoilt that film for me.

The acting was adequate, I could not go beyond that. Platoon and Full Metal Jacket were much better Vietnam war films as the acting and characterisation in those films was so good.

A well made film that benefits from the believable acting of the entire cast; especially the lead actress who elegantly held the entire film together with a restrained and effective performance that endeared her to the viewer.

The lovely location did not hurt either; however…………..

As a horror or ghost film I did not find that it worked and I also sometimes had the impression that it was originally a 3-part serial that had been put together as a film.

Essentially, the film was not creepy or atmospheric enough to set my spine a-tingling as a ghost film nor did it deliver enough shocks or 'gore' as a horror film (I am ignoring the one scene with the social worker, but that has been done may times before; though I did feel queasy at the thought of the mouth-to-mouth).

The film sets up scenes where waves of tension should be crashing over the viewer (e.g. the medium); but any tension or expectation ebbs away with the low key approach taken, allowing the film to drift gently along for another 20-minutes of nothing really happening. The director should perhaps have watched similar films, e.g. 'The Innocents', to get an idea on how to generate mounting fright and spine-tingling tension, as he certainly had the actors to achieve this.

The whole film was just too flat to be frightening and I am glad I watched in on DVD at home rather than at the cinema as I had to curb my impatience sometimes with a cup of tea. Still it is interesting how different people react to films; some found this film frightening and others found it little more than a quirky thriller or mystery. Perhaps the ones who found it frightening have more imagination (I do not really mean that!).

D-Wars started out in circa 1500 and should really have stayed there as the storyline was introduced commendably quickly allowing plenty of time for some character development and plenty of action/fighting scenes between protagonists wielding basically the same hand-to-hand type weapons (excluding the 'Stalin' organs etc). Also the dark-army were menacing, the SFX good and it would have been interesting if the young couple had fought the dark lord instead of more-or-less committing suicide and becoming reincarnated in 21st Century LA.

The reincarnated male lead was played by a suitably weak actor poorly portraying a weak character who could think of nothing but running from a dragon that gave him (and Sarah) every opportunity to run and escape whenever it caught up with them! Sarah, the reincarnated female-lead, was not a great deal better and God knows what they found to fall in love with as neither of then had a personality. The lead performances mirror the entire cast who gave uniformly poor performances.

The script was indescribably poor, and not only suffered from the major weakness of borrowing already hackneyed lines from other films, but neither developed the characters or even the plot.

The overall premise of the story was not particularly poor, but the developing storyline and continuity were excessively poor in that nothing made any particular sense and it was so random! E.g. Why Mexico? How did the soldiers know to go to some mine-workings? Where did the end scene take place? How could he get shot at point blank range and get up again unharmed? The battles were curiously flat; with tanks, helicopters, dragons etc they should have been good but somehow I felt them to be un-involving and, well, boring. Perhaps it was the SFX which I felt to be mediocre, or perhaps I just like close up and personal as in 'Jason and the Argonauts' or 'Aliens'.

I do not care if the film was Korean, Japanese, American or Mongolian! I judged it on its own merits, which are very few. Children may like it; but not discerning ones.

An (apparently) huge man-eating killer croc' is on the loose in Thailand, chomping its way through various locals and tourists along the waterways and coast of a gorgeous looking country. Although the croc did not appear to be particularly large I was pleased that footage of actual crocs (yes, plural!) were used in the main as the villain instead of that usual laugh-fest called CGI. This, and a dog by the pool, were the plus points.

Enter a cast of the most boring people imaginable. At centre stage is the hero, 'Jack', a wannabe Jack-the-lad, who should really have been hunting for a personality instead of a croc; ditto his annoying nephew. Jack runs a sort of zoo and runs afoul of a local 'Mr Big', who wants Jack's land for development, and employs various means to try and get Jack's zoo shut down ('Mr Big' has the local police, tax inspectors and city officials in his pocket - you get the picture). Mr Big causes a beautiful-but-boring animal welfare inspector to inspect Jack's zoo with a view to closing it down. Jack teams up with said beautiful-but-boring animal welfare inspector (did not see that coming!) to hunt the hungry croc.

These two join forces with Mike Madsen, a croc hunter who has been hunting this particular croc for some time, and obviously cause Mike to yawn his way through the film (as I did). It is very obvious Mike found Jack and his nephew tedious in the extreme as in the last 15 minutes he sends Jack under the water to kill the croc armed only with a small spear and Jack's nephew of in a small rubber boat armed only with a revolver! When this fails Mike later urges someone to cut off Jack's leg when it is trapped in the jaws of the dead croc; which met its demise under a lethal shower of lead from Mike's AK47 (bet he hoped Jack was in the croc's vicinity!).

Cast aside, I have to ask....does no one speak Thai in Thailand? Police, local officials, TV reporters, children, 'Mr Big' they all spoke English even if not talking to Jack (who would be too dense to learn any Thai) - I can read subtitles if necessary. Even the beautiful-but-boring animal welfare inspector did not appear to be able speak with the local water-dwellers and she was meant to be Thai!

Best actor? The dog by the pool that tried to warn its master ('Mr Big')that the croc was lurking in his swimming pool. The dog was of coursecompletely ignored with dire consequences for Mr Big and his brother; but fortunately not for the dog!

Possible Spoilers ahead………….

I like ghost films; I find them more frightening than horror films as I, like most people, have had supernatural experiences and do not have to suspend disbelief too much as I must with horror films.

Sadly, I was disappointed with this one and had to force myself to watch it until the end (doing the ironing helped!).

The story of Lucy Keyes, as related in the film, is a nice bit of local folklore but it is not even remotely frightening. Consequently, the film is not frightening because…where is the menace coming from? Some people would hear the ghost of the 18th century mother calling Lucy! Lucy! during the night, and the 21st century mother, whilst taking a break from her repetitive tossing & turning, once caught a glimpse of her ghost; but nothing was done with this glimpse nor did it develop the film at all. The ghosts were almost incidental apart from the next door neighbour using smelly devices to keep the ghost away. Finding a hidden mural is an old and effective device, however, the director did nothing with the mural that was found under the wallpaper; it should have revealed a clue or added to the story, rather than merely remaining as background scenery in the room or an occasional talking point.

This film is a catalogue of wasted opportunities to add suspense and a sense of mounting fright. Instead the viewer is treated to almost 90 interminable minutes of the ethics of wind turbines and a boringly unstable mother having the same dream over and over while doing some research on the side and eventually wandering through the woods at night calling Lucy! Lucy! in imitation of the mother of Lucy Keyes! I understand that both mothers had a dead child and the modern mother could empathise with the ghost mother, and that she would be afraid that her own Lucy would also disappear. Unfortunately, she just came across as paranoid with a constant snappy attitude towards her husband.

So, to sum up; nothing interesting happens for 90 minutes and there is not one single scare or suspenseful moment in the entire film!!!!

Incidentally, the crypt appeared to have dry-stone walls; dry-stone walls do not remain intact for 200 years without maintenance, so I think Lucy's remains would have been found at least 150 years earlier!

This film is so dreadful that it is......dreadful. It says something when a dog out acts the rest of the cast. Basically, in 2018, a not-very-bright-or-quick American prisoner named Dante escapes from a Spanish prison camp and is pursued by the indestructible Terminator of the canine world; the eponymous Rottweiler, all metal bones and gnashing teeth. Helicopters also search for him but he hides behind bushes - apparently Infra-Red is a forgotten science by 2018! Oh yes, he is also searching for his ex-girlfriend whilst suffering from memory loss - surely this requires a brain? The acting is simply awful and consists of our hero stumbling around and tripping over every twig, stone or dust particle around. At one point he manages to loose his clothes in the best tradition of the incompetent hero; leaving his gun & clothes 100 yards from where he is naked in the river, allowing the canine jack-the-ripper to get the drop on him! Later he stumbles naked into a farm inhabited by a mother and her little girl. After Dante has a spot of sex with the mother and acquires some trousers, the dog breaks into the house and the trio escape through a window followed closely by the dog; the mother/daughter run towards a cellar that is at least a 100 yards from the house whilst Dante moves 5 yards down a slight slope in the opposite direction expecting the dog to follow him. Instead the dog follows the mother and daughter and catches them at the cellar entrance where it kills the mother after a struggle. Whilst all this is drama is happening, Dante is still stumbling the 5 yards back up the slope!

Later, stumbling weakly through a red light district and nursing an injured arm, he still manages to best a perfectly able and fit drugs pusher and five minutes later, after stumbling weakly into an open area and collapsing, learns the fate of his girlfriend and sprints and leaps onto a helicopter that is taking off and causes it to crash and explode with the pooch inside. Apparently, one year before, he allowed the rottweiler to rip apart his screaming girlfriend whilst he stood 5 or 6 paces away wondering what to do. After she was dead he leaped into action and bashed the dog around the head with a short metal pipe. Fast forwarding to the helicopter crash, the rotty's metal skeleton emerges from the blaze for the final showdown.

This film is truly terrible; weak script, incompetent direction and acting.

I'm just about to watch 'Dust Devil' on Sky's ZoneHorror - it surely cannot be worse......