Pickings

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source: Pickings

After the first 40 minutes of art breaks, vauge plot revelations and gratuitous semi violence I was ready to pack this heap in. The acting if it can be called that, was trite and ham handed at best and willfully stupid at worst. The villan filmed in Black and white cameo was the most thinly scripted ghoul yet. Please don't waste your time on this dreck you may want to kill yourself before the end - much like the cast and producers should have done early on.

At first I didn't really warm to the movie, the first few minutes proved to be coming from a jagged, low budget perspective... Yet somewhere lurking was a Tarantinoesc bombshell that went from lukewarm to boiling hot and easily could have been far darker than it actually was. What could have been a horrific ending up being dark poetry. The direction, continuity and acting sometimes felt a little lacking, but it's easy to forgive as everyone seemed very genuine and all those involved are likely to mature into making a higher production value despite the low budget. All in all, it felt more authentic than many big budget movies that wow us with CGI and global actors that earn millions. Personally I will keep my eyes open for more from Usher Morgan...

The intro scene was captivating with it's mood and colours. But after that, it became a mess. The director has painted the villains black and white like Sin City but the pacing is off, a bit too slow and never really gets your attention. I get that this is low budget but with skill, it should engage the audience and sadly it failed to do this. Other scenes they used soundtrack Eric throws the mood continuity of the movie and it now felt like a mish mash of music videos that makes you wonder what is this movie trying to show??? After 20 minutes, I still couldn't figure it out and the acting has just become worse and amateur that I decided to turn this off. So here I am writing a review to warn you that you can waste your time on something better.

As someone who considers himself a fan of independent films, and genre films in particular, I found a lot to enjoy in this movie. It's a mixture of film noir, spaghetti westerns and comic book genre films like Sin City and 300, all that made behind the mask of a super-stylized independent film. The visuals, editing and acting was all top-notch. The story was gripping, and the main character of Jo was bad-ass! Fans of niche genre films would love this movie.

This was front loaded with fake stars but it is a completely clumsy snooze in reality. This isn't even a B movie but someone seems to have thought that they were making a hip masterpiece the way it focuses on being artistic and full of technique. Someone should have pointed out that they were supposed to be making a movie with a plot and that made some sense in someway, being interesting would have helped.

When I went to see this movie, I did so because it had a 7/10 rating. I had expected it to be a good movie, but what I was met with was a trope and cliché filled attempt at a revenge film by a director/writer who is trying way too hard to be Quentin Tarantino. Imagine Tommy Wiseau directing "Kill Bill" and you would get something in the vicinity of this movie. It's been a while since a movies dialogue made me cringe this badly. I feel it is my civic duty to warn others away from seeing this, so I made an IMDb account with the sole purpose of writing this review. That is how disappointed I am with this film.

It's an OK film at best. Could be good, if it weren't a huge Tarantino ripoff, especially of Kill Bill. I mean even in small details like the coma of the main character. That's beyond reference for me, it's just lazy writing. Also the whole vibe is "tarantinesque", like same camera angles, old western-like soundtrack, titles for characters on screen and overall style. New filmmakers should be original, or at least try to. Otherwise what's the point? To do something that someone already did? ... Although I usually like some, there are waaay to much musical bits, to the point it gets annoying. Like watching a sequence of music videos, while you just want the story to flow. Beside all that, there are one or two cool things in it. Not enough to really recommend it. Many great films were made with shoelace budgets, that is not an excuse. And this is not one of them.

Refreshing off the beaten Hollywood path kind of movie with interesting characters and lots of action. Good acting and good music. It's like meeting your cousins from the country for a weekend of beating the crap out of the neighborhood bullies. Recommended.