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Reviews
Samaritan (2022)
Stallone is good.
First of all, Stallone is perfect in this. An actor who's career has been defined by his physical roles who's now I'm his twilight action hero years but still looks like he has a right hand that could stop a train. Ideal casting for this war weary super hero that's long since retired who knows he's not what he was and just wants to be left alone. He saves a kid from bullies, (yawn), who then inserts himself into his hero's life wanting to hear war stories and learn to fight.
The relationship is touching to begin with but rolls into cliche. If Stallone's character were more like Hugh Jackman's Logan it would've been more interesting. The bad guy is rather poorly written and again cliched and the movie goes along a well trodden path of the hero coming out of retirement to save the day against a villain that just wants to be bad. A fun movie that could've been much improved with less 'on the nose' dialogue.
Watch with beer and popcorn and it'll be fine.
La Brea (2021)
More shatteringly badly written dialogue.
Within literally the first thirty seconds it became apparent the script had all the trappings of what gets me scrambling for the remote in the first five minutes of any new American series. And don't tell me that I didn't give it a chance, you don't get a second chance at making a good first impression so the beginning should be staggeringly good.
Inexcusably on the nose exposition as well.
Like I said, all in the first five minutes.
La belva (2020)
He was in the Special Forces?
Special forces guys don't punch you in the face when they're fighting.
Money from a drug deal isn't handed over in nightclubs.
Hoodlums don't refer to drugs as 'stuff'
These is just three examples of the usual mistakes when making a movie like this that take you completely out of the drama.
And this was only 25 mins in.
Why not get an army guy to advise on actual disabling techniques.
Surely showing money changing hands in a club, upon reflection, would be obvious in its unrealism.
And we don't need to be told that's it's drugs they're doing...we can see.
A bit more time revisiting the story amending these less believable moments would've helped, though in general terms, we've seen this film done a lot better, many times.
The Third Day (2020)
Looks great for a while, interesting for a while.
It IS rather draining at times, there's no denying it, I did a few 30secs fast forwards on a few scenes when they became a little drawn out. Strange that this often happened during what were meant to be the more dramatic situations.
A storyline critique is that there doesn't seem to be any social hierarchy in the islanders. One episode sees a character belittle another, yet another episode finds that same character being given orders by the character they belittled. The effect of this was to find the islander characters, on the whole, quite unimportant.
The series on the whole seems to suffer from the same problem they all do, of having a great opening idea, but then simply running out is steam at the end.
But, the positives, if you aren't as easily annoyed by such things as I am, and like a supernatural thrillers of missing persons, secrets and coverups, then this will be a satisfying 6hrs. The acting is fantastic, even the children aren't that irritating.
Ghosts of War (2020)
Perfectly watchable, people are always too hard.
I really don't know what people think they're entitled to see every time they choose a movie. Whoever was responsible for this movie gave it their best shot. Great care was clearly taken in the photography and set design. A story that's a little different with actors who give it their all. Give it a break.