Space Marines

Hey! It had 785 muzzle flashes--that was enough for me!

From the creators of APEX & just as bad... This film has an 18 certificate god knows why? The acting is very cardboard, the story predictable & boring, even the FX & design are poor, I've seen better on 'Thunderbirds'. Not even Meg Foster could stop this space ship from sinking, avoid at all cost, go see Starship Troopers instead.

To me it is a great mystery that movies such as Space Marinies actually get made. The plot is ridiculous and predictable, the acting one big joke. The only thing preventing me to rate this movie a plain zero is the unability to do so.

Taking into account all of the major blockbusters coming out with their big budget effects and big name cast, they almost never have anything going for them except the fact that they have major effects and a big cast, enter SPACE MARINES, a film that didn't have a big budget or mind blowing effects or a big name cast but it was ten times more entertaining than any big film.

The storyline is simple and easy to follow, the cast all give better performances than most would let you to believe, the direction is well handled and it also has reasonable production values for a DTV film.

I recommend this film to anyone that wants to have a good time, it doesn't have the budget but the entertainment is there.

STAR RATING: ***** Unmissable **** Very Good *** Okay ** You Could Go Out For A Meal Instead * Avoid At All Costs

In the future, all is kept fine and dandy by a group of men and women called The United Federation of Planets. But when some dastardly fellows take over a space-ship to enforce a gold deal, some fellows called the Space Marines are called in to sort them out.

This is a far glossier presentation than Talaat Captan's earlier work such as Digital Man and A.P.E.X., but it's still glaringly low budget. It all basically just feels like Under Siege in outer space (even the spaceship is named the Missouri as in Under Siege!) In fact, there are weird scene references through-out to that particular film that left me with the impression that the writer had some special kind of liking towards it. Aside from that, it's just the usual collection of clichés that are typical of a straight-to-video work such as this. Not to mention some really bad acting, from the token black guy to the lead bad guy who seems to think he's in some production of Hamlet at the local rep as opposed to such a flimsy piece of work as this. Glossier and more violent, certainly, but definitely not as enjoyable as Captan's earlier work. **