Echo Base

source: Echo Base

Is this a comedy? With the complete lack of respect shown to anything military in this movie you'd think it was. One character is wearing Sgt ranks in one scene and then captain ranks in another, just to give you an idea of how badly researched this movie was. This is not even one of those "laughable 1* movies" it's just point blank angering. The dialogue was .... 😩 painful to say the least. It's borderline insulting to have to sit thru this and not to get frustrated with the fact that money was spent on making this. Save yourself the time, the 2hrs of your life that you will never get back and skip this altogether.

This movie does not deserve the one star I gave it. As an Air Force veteran, I am ashamed at how the director of this mess treats the uniform and dedication to the oath. While it does have an underlying concern for misinformation and disinformation, this is so far from reality as to boggle the mind. Even when looking at this from a standpoint of entertainment, it does not pass muster. A children's Disney movie has more plausibility! I realize that there was a time when the Pentagon made a forceful statement against Hollywood for revealing mistakes that cost lives and sought to prevent the broadcast of those incidents, and that Hollywood responded by making military movies with visual themes that prevent any association with actual events. But after court decisions that stated that the First Amendment protected producers and directors such that they could, in fact, make those movies, I expected the mockery to stop. Sadly, as this movie illustrates, it has not! This film should be classified as a comedy.

I rated this three stars but only to leave room under it for the few worse movies I've seen. The whole production looked like a bunch of guys got bored at work and decided to run around the basement and server room of the office building and make a movie. Naturally they'd need some uniforms so they went to an military surplus store and put on whatever they had in the sale bins. They seem to have had their mothers fill in with some homemade patches. Sets, props, customs were bad and acting, plot and dialog did nothing to elevate this mess. If I had to find something positive to say, well, the sound was clear and photography well lite. Best ti skip this one.

Goldstein and Keavney managed to do it, make a totally Hollywood formula movie that combines every depressing Hollywood cliche they can think of. So, I'm not considering that a spoiler, because I won't say what the cliches are. We have a movie that tries to be sleek, and that only makes it worse, by wasting special effects, the proper scenery, and resources for not only a poor story, not only a predictable story, not only a ridiculous story, but worse than that, a contrived story, the bane of writing. A small team inside a silo gets orders to send out a nuke, and they try to verify the orders. Not one character is even remotely credible in this story, not one. Thos who have seen this movie may try to find one, and maybe there are some who have one or two lines, but overall, this is "non credible characters in credible circumstance", the opposite of what a good story is to be. I only struggle through it to see if the writing would surprise me by making something other than the usual formula, and to critique it. I was ready to give this one every chance, and it blew every chance.

Opening scene: a woman in an Air Force camouflage uniform with the rank of Captain and Staff Sergeant. Which rank is she? Who knows...at least the Lieutenant was just a Lieutenant. Then, the next scene has an older woman, 50s or 60s who has Senior Airmen stripes. She's a lower rank to the Captain/Staff Sergeant. Now, some lower rank personnel can be commanders to higher rank personnel but in certain situations; this: being in control of nuclear weapons, doesn't seem to be the case. And, since she is ranked considerably lower - why is a Senior Airman in charge of a U. S. nuclear facility?!?!?! Then the scene after that is a dream sequence by the Captain/Staff Sergeant in everything we just watched. This is not getting better. It's getting way worse by every scene. Oh, they have Lieutenant Airmen! Yeah, don't watch this. It'll melt your brain. It doesn't get better. I ended up skip-watching it until the end. The direction, script, special effect, acting, music, everything is so bad. Don't watch it. Save your brain.

Okay, I haven't gotten too far but It's really pretty bad. For some reason the captain has specialist or sergeant stripes on her shirt and captain bars on her hat. Other officers have similar errors. The name tags are nearly falling off. If my uniform had been anything like that I would have been drummed out of the Army. Hey granted this is the Air Force but they're not that much more slack than the army. The dialogue is so far has been horrible. And the comments about chemtrails just make it down right? Silly. The dialogue is horrible here sexual harassment is starting almost from the first part of the dialogue. The props are substandard and the extras don't seem like they fit in the movie. Basic military protocol is being completely ignored. I'm not sure how this got a seven but it's ridiculous. Going to have to turn this one off before it gets too far into it. It's clearly a B movie at best and the dialogue shows it. Sorry not one I can recommend. Don't wear.