I'll say it right at the top: 'Redemption' feels like a movie that somehow got made while every person on hand - cast, crew, writer, director - was doing the bare minimum. "Half-hearted" is too charged a descriptor for the bland pablum this represents.
There are several noteworthy names in the cast. Writer Jack Capece doesn't have many credits to his name, but that's no guarantor of quality one way or the other; director Art Camacho has longer list of work under his belt, but that can go either way, too. For whatever 'Redemption' may have going for it, it doesn't take long to raise a skeptical eyebrow. From one scene to the next, regardless of the content or mood, the movie struggles to attain a basic level of authenticity. Action sequences are filmed with wildly flailing, unsteady camerawork and overzealous editing that is supposed to impart a synthetic variation of the excitement and thrills that should manifest organically in a good film. Frankly, it looks like the work of an amateur. The most noteworthy woman in the cast, Cynthia Rothrock, is reduced to a supporting part - for only part of the runtime - whose dialogue paints the character as a stereotype. For whatever minor wit the dialogue and scene writing may possess at large, it pales in comparison to what feels like a weak attempt to cut and paste lines and ideas from a checklist of underwhelming action/crime-thriller conventions.
I didn't have high expectations when I started watching, but still I'm left aghast at what I'd committed to. The concept isn't especially remarkable, but that doesn't mean it can't have possibilities. Yet writing and direction alike feel entirely blase, almost disinterested in their own production. Nothing about the screenplay makes much of an impression, and at many points it's altogether questionable; the narrative simply doesn't hold water. When action scenes aren't disorderly and unconvincing, they instead feel either staged and ungenuine, or possibly even stiff and wooden - nothing like the invigorating bombast one would hope for. However soft or loud the voices get, scenes of less active drama play out with a level of care, sincerity, and realism - or rather, lack thereof - that all but completely draws us out of the viewing experience. To one extent or another I've seen enough of the cast to understand their capabilities, but their acting here is helplessly flimsy, further splintering our engagement as we're unable to care about their characters any more than they do (and they don't).
With all this said, the plot is also light and thin in fundamental terms of content; some story threads are brought up, but never resolved. Yet 'Redemption' maintains a brisk pace. Before you know it the movie is half over, then only has a few minutes left, and it feels like almost nothing has happened all along. The climax arrives with astounding abruptness - and thankfully is over just as quickly, because it's one of the most poorly written and executed climaxes I can recall seeing in any movie.
I don't know what more to say without repeating myself and exhausting a thesaurus in the process. This is abhorrent. This is what happens when an assembly of people working in the film industry are pulled into a feature by one means or another, but none of them apparently have any meaningful investment beyond when they get their paycheck. And, hey - respect; everybody has to eat. But nobody has to watch 'Redemption.' Even if you're a diehard fan of someone in the cast, this is a mesmerizing, awful waste of 85 minutes.
Just don't.
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