It's quite the list of recognizable names and faces that filmmaker Matt Palmieri somehow assembled for this flick, and on that basis one has to wonder how it came and went unnoticed in 2000. Then one sits to watch, and it is no longer any wonder at all. The dialogue, scene writing, and characters are obnoxious, amateurish, ill-considered rubbish from the very beginning, and from one scene to the next the film seems to become ever more empty and vapid. The old family and acquaintances of protagonist Tyler are written to be unlikable and boorish, yet apart from their abject villainy I see little meaningful distinction between the folks he has tried to leave behind and those he newly embraces. The music is bland and stale; Palmieri's direction hovers is almost constantly overcharged, and is often also stilted and contrived; the cast seem forced and/or unsure of themselves from one moment to the next. As we reach the one-third mark we can only hope that things will improve, but if they do it will be a wild sea change that's just as confounding as the bluster that greets us from the outset. 'Sand,' unfortunately, is not very good, and in fact it's almost unwatchable for how ham-fisted and questionable it is in every capacity.
Whatever the mood, however earnest or raucous it tries to be, the viewing experience is desperately hollow across the board. As we enter the second act and complications arise in the narrative the turn inspires a quizzical twist of the head, for the plot development isn't exactly believable. As the minutes tick by it almost seems like Palmieri is specifically trying to aggravate us, as if the movie were a test to see how long audience members could endure the pain of watching, for not only does it never improve but it only ever gets worse. There are ideas that were workable, certainly, and some odds and ends come off better than others, yet in every regard the whole is so immediately tawdry and tiresome that it's hard to care about those aspects that are done reasonably well. I see the possibilities of what the feature could have been, yet it's uniformly defined by such blunt, tactless, pointless, vacuous, heedless rot that all the value it could have claimed is sapped. When all is said and done I won't remember any of the positive qualities 'Sand' bore, only how exhausting it was to endure ninety minutes of Palmieri's worst impulses.
There was potential here, and it was squandered. Whatever it is you think you're going to get out of this title, you won't find it, and I strongly suggest you find something else to watch. Let this 'Sand' be washed out to sea with the next wave.
