Shot Down

This movie is the perfect example where a decent plotline featuring good actors can be totally butchered by terrible scripting and bad dialogue. While the premise of a straight forward armoured car robbery and the subsequent battle for the spoils is (in my humble opinion) a solid storyline, the execution of the storyline in this movie is so bad as to be almost unwatchable. This is obviously a made-for-TV movie (the DVD features 4x3 format and stereo sound only, no widescreen or 5.1), but manages to fall short of even that benchmark. The characters are (for the most part) ridiculous, the dialog extremely corny, and the details of the storyline so bad they would appear to have been written by a ten year old. The thing that lured me to hire this piece of rubbish was the R rating - I was expecting some violent and graphic acts of carnage. But even the action sequences in this movie are poor - one notably featuring a bizarre looping of footage after someone is shot. Whether this was an editing glitch or a failed attempt to heighten the dramatic impact of the sequence is open for debate. In short, avoid this film like the proverbial plague. Do yourself a favour, and hire The Salton Sea instead.

This must be one of the worst movies I've ever seen. The plot was so tiny, that writer/director Kurt Voss had to fill the time with "Pulp Fiction"-like meaningless dialog. Unfortunately he is not Quentin Tarantino. So his dialogs are just plain boring, not funny. The acting is bäh, the characters are flat and unbelievable, but the main problem is: Nothing ever happens. They are just talking and talking and talking and bla bla bla. Don't waste your time on this one. Instead watch Pulp Fiction once again. Even if you've already seen it a thousand times.

1/10

Not the worst film I've ever seen, but it ranks among the worst.

Best described as a cynical appeal to the adrenaline junky, this film features an unbelievably high body count, a thin plot, and really goes overboard with its unrelenting stream of obscenities. None of this appears to support any higher purpose or artistic intent and is therefore basically gratuitous. Skip this one. There are many better crime thrillers out there that are not this junky or offensive.

No one ever said that crimes are fun and entertainment an this movie shows us just that. It keeps it real. Ice T plays a very very bad man and does in in a manner that is believable. The acting may not be beautiful and emotional but it it real. Real crime with a touch of fictional intertwining of characters who are also as real. It isn't about the acting, it's about the personal stories we can imagine, such as the hardened criminal trying to go straight seeking God and ending up using God as an excuse for his inability to stop killing innocents, it is about the derelict brother who always fails because he is unable to realize his ways are wrong and ends up preying on his good hearted sibling. It's about the pretty girl who is also brave and not easily intimidated. And there is more, the intelligent black kid who wastes his talent using it for the wrong reasons and the white wannabe gangsters who end up getting involved with more than they can handle and pay a high price. All these characters may appear boring to some (see other comment) but they really exist, what the film does is involve them in a tragicomic situation that may not be as fascinating as Pulp Fiction but is by far more real, if for no other reason than the actors not being Hollywood Stars.

This is yet another sharp, stylish genre piece from the talented and always underappreciated Kurt Voss, a skilled director as at home in the world of low-budget exploitation as in that of character-driven art house work. Here Voss uses the limitations of the low-budget genre world as assets, creating a work of energy and distinction marked by the same kind of witty dialogue as his collaborations with Allison Anders or his underrated HORSEPLAYER. Whereas most of the straight-to-video and cable world is a vast wasteland of clunky, empty-headed junk, Voss is continuing in the tradition of people like Jonathan Demme, Martin Scorsese, and Joe Dante, who in the seventies used exploitation films as vehicles for intelligent, personal entertainments. Like all of Kurt Voss's work from BORDER RADIO to SUGAR TOWN, THE HEIST is a great deal of fun and highly recommended.