Reviews

This is a good, tight and taught thriller. I liked just about everything about it. It's well written and wonderfully acted. The bad guy is scary and unpredictable right away. The actor playing the bad guy is spooky without being cheesy or over the top. He is even believable as a sort of crazy ass super villain.

I liked the story, etc. etc. but I did not like the music editing. I think this short would have been 1000 times more suspenseful and thrilling without the continual and very annoying, overwrought sound track. The music is very good, well written, performed well and it's obvious someone of skill wrote and produced the music track.

However, it is non-stop and intrusive. It's far too loud in the beginning and it NEVER STOPS. You notice it every second it is NOT enhancing it is obscuring.

I suggest the film makers keep everything else about this movie as it is but go back to the drawing board and rethink the music editing.

Seriously annoying to the point of awful distraction.

Can only give this a 5 due to highly irritating music editing.

Where to begin...

How (make that WHY) on earth can you over produce music that was known for its over production in the first place??? Obnoxiously cheesy (and not in a good way) and cliché (as in way overdone) storyline, incredibly terrible acting, unreal depiction not true to the era (no drug use???)... and it gets worse from there.

The dialogue is so hackneyed, forced and corny it is embarrassing to hear it come out of the actor's mouths.

Unreal characters doing unreal things...because of a stupid story written by a lazy moron... whoever heard of being able to take a break in the most popular rock club on the strip to hang out with some chick you just met? No drugs in the rock scene in L.A.?? Watered down bullsh*t.. for real... did Disney make this crap????? The film makers should not be allowed to work on any film ever again for this mess. I am serious. Why waste the money and resources on these incompetent, tasteless, talentless people? I am talking about the writer, director, producers, etc. I don't really blame the actors though most of the performances were just awful shyte, too. I blame the direction for that, though.

You know what... this movie is so bad, I am going to stop writing this post so I can stop thinking about it.

Look up a movie here on IMDb called "The Apple" if you want something to compare this god-awful mess to. It is a cult classic because it is so bad it's good. Rock of Ages may have taken it's place.

1,000 stars BELOW zero for this pile of manure.

I am giving this movie a 1 because the only good they did was put Michael Sheen in it. I really will watch anything with Sheen in it. They get a 1 for that decision. However, they get a big fat 0 for everything else. Even Sheen could not make this movie the least bit interesting or suspenseful though. I didn't even care if all the bombs were real and went off killing everyone on the planet by time this movie was done.

Seriously. A great issue that should automatically make for a deep, contemplative, thought provoking, debate making, suspenseful thriller. But no.... Hollywood film makers do it again. Why am I not surprised.

This movie revolves around the act of torture and when one could be just and even moral in doing it to another human being. You would think the torture scenes would be more realistic and shocking but they looked like a C movie horror film made by high school students. Sheen does his best but the writing is so terrible and Samuel L. Jackson's performance was (once again and not surprisingly) so forced and wooden and just plain fake. He did not come off as a ruthless torturer or even the least bit sadistic for that matter.

I was bored... really... a man is supposed to be being tortured and I couldn't have cared less about it. The scenes were just that cheesy to me. Bad direction and uninspired dialog that was, at time, torture in itself to listen to.

The debate between the characters was so cliché, stereotyped and one dimensional. Poor Carrie Ann Moss, who is really just a good actor at best, was so flat as to have almost no affect most of the time. She did not come off as a hard boiled and morally conscious FBI agent who has seen it all until now. She just seemed mildly interested and bored at best.

When it could have gotten really interesting and intense, the film makers dropped the ball in the worst way. In the ending scenes Jackson decides to bring in the terrorists kids and gets ready to torture them in front of the terrorist. At one point it seems to work. However, Jackson is not convinced. But, for some silly ass reason, he will not make sure he has all the information even though he is the one that says the terrorist is not telling the entire truth.

So Jackson tells the brass to frick off. The head honcho, supposedly the President's direct man, panics and tells Jackson that he will have Jackson's kids tortured if Jackson does not continue on and torture the terrorists kids. Then, just like that, they drop the whole subject.

At first, early on, I thought this movie was going to be just like The Life of David Gale starring Kevin Spacey as a man who ends up on death row for killing his terminally ill friend in what looks like some weird rape/murder fest. The twist is, Spacey's character is an activist who publicly protests the death penalty. In reality, he is innocent and is making the ultimate sacrifice to make his point that the death penalty is not good if one innocent person gets killed because of it.

Seemed like the terrorist in this movie might be making a similar statement. Seemed he was out to prove that the USA is no better, if not worse than the people they claim are evil and should be stopped, ironically enough, at all costs.

However, the dumb ass ending leaves us wondering. Well, kind of wondering. The FBI finds the fake bombs... but at the very end we see an undisclosed fourth bomb tick away its final seconds. But, of course, we go to black just as the bomb would go off. Lame. Just freaking' lame.

Where to begin...

You can teleport, but you run from bullets instead of.... teleporting. I don't know... I am thinking completely disappearing from the danger is better than running a few feet away and trying to hide behind a car from it. Where you will then be shot at again. But, you can completely leave the scene in an instant. Um... yeah, OK.

You have the bad guy in a vulnerable position where you can easily and safely get rid of him thus ending most if not all of your problems. But you simply TELL him you are going to kill him and then LET HIM GO.

You see the bad guy doing bad things and telling you he is going to do bad things in bad ways OVER and OVER AGAIN and yet every single time he does something bad you are, for some inexplicable reason, surprised.

You can stop time with a mere thought. Six bombs are about to explode. Instead of stopping time to take care of the issue, which you have demonstrated you can do with no problem at all, you take a huge chance in effing things up by having some other character try to be in 5 places at once so you and he can "cut the wires" on all the bombs at the same time. But if you mess up even a little bit, the bombs will explode killing you and a bunch of innocent violin playing children nearby. But, you can stop time. Yet you choose not to. OK, then.

Time is going to come to an abrupt halt on this hot mess of a teen super hero show if the writers continue producing obviously lazy and contrite work.

Par for the course for American television though. Unlike the hero seeing the same thing over and over again and being taken aback by it, I am not shocked at all.

Ya, this show is just OK. I mean, it is vaguely entertaining. The premise is interesting but it really is a one trick pony type of deal. The ongoing story of the 20 murder mystery is nothing new and is not suspenseful in the least.

I guess that is why the writer and producers of this particular episode decided to rip off outright a classic scene from a classic movie in one of the lamest moves I have ever seen in a TV show.

Do they really have such a lack of ideas that they have to resort to obvious plagiarism? I am seriously unimpressed and now don't care if this show continues or not.

Also, the motives of the villain in this episode are so cliché and overused it is beyond annoying, it's just plain boring.

Ya, this show is boring. Mediocre and boring. Par for the course.

A top notch noir type suspense movie starring Jennifer Tilly, Gina Gershon and Joe Pantalioni. Stylistically filmed with a thorough script and great acting. Sure there are a few mafia type clichés in the story but the acting, pacing, editing and overall story more than make up for the one or two flaws this film may have.

I think this film has become a sort of cult favorite because of the steamy sex scenes between the two female stars but that is not all this picture has going for it. There is a good suspense story here. Who is telling the truth? Who is lying? Who can be trusted? What will happen next? Tilly and Gershon were both fabulous as Violet and Corky new lovers who scheme to steal money from a powerful mob boss. But it is Pantalioni's over the GED, Cesar, who is my favorite. As he races to figure out what the hell is going on and to keep from getting caught up and killed, he is driven into a desperate frenzy that is great to watch the actor build up to.

Really, this film does not disappoint from beginning to end (which is a bit predictable but still appropriate) and if you like any of the actors, suspense movies and great cinematography then this is a film for you.

Not as violent as most of the newer movies of this genre but still a bit bloody. Not recommend for those who do not like any violence at all.