Trigger Man

When people say there is nothing but walking around for a good hour, this is not an exaggeration. In fact, it may be too generous, because for about five whole minutes the three hunters sit and do absolutely nothing. I thought the screen had frozen and so did the person I was watching it with. But no, they just weren't moving. And this is LONG before there is any "action" so it's not like the film is building tension.

Unfortunately, when the action finally begins the viewer may have been literally lulled to sleep and it's blink-and-you-miss.

The movie takes much too long to get going and when it does the characters just make stupid choices. It's an Idiot Plot. There is a lot of shaky cam and inexplicable cuts that make it impossible to know what is going on. I know this is going for the Blair Witch kind of feel, but the movie takes too long to do anything or build any tension so rather than feeling nervous at the shaky parts, you just tune out.

The characters are non-entities. It felt like the actors weren't even giving an effort, and I can't really blame them. I remarked to my companion that this seemed like a first year film school student thing. An "A" for effort kind of thing for whoever made this. Nice try buddy, I'm sure you'll make a good movie next time.

available on Netflix Instant, with a 90% RT rating, 80-minute runtime, fun premise, what have you got to lose? too much, more than a straight-to-internet genre curiosity has any right to take. I guess the big thing about this movie is that it BUILDS TENSION. and it does, for 30 seconds or so. then it spends another 30 seconds killing that tension, and then several minutes beating its corpse. It's shot 'documentary-style' - except they've chosen to mimic the raw footage used to make a documentary, rather than an actual film. so it's more youtube-style, really. even the beginning of the film, before there's any conflict, there are endless sequences of characters doing nothing. sometimes the time pops up on the screen, not in the corner like a crime serial, but the screen goes black and displays the time of day for us. who the ---- cares? we're following one character around in a forest! why remind us of how long we've spent watching it? there are a few occasions where something actually happens in the film, none of them notable. this was the longest 80 minutes of my life.

Reggie, Ray, and Sean are New York City friends on a hunting trip in the woods. It's a long day of disappointment. There are no bucks to be found. Out of the blue, bullets suddenly start flying at them.

This is a no budget indie film. The most notable name here is Ti West. It's really early in his career. This is supposed to be inspired by true events and the writing isn't much more than that. This starts with a tour of a bodega and then it's a walk in the woods. It's not the most compelling filmmaking. The actors are nobodies. Maybe they're Ti's school friends. The first half is a student film. The action picks up for the last half especially the last ten minutes in the abandoned buildings. It's bloody and it has some tension.

It's always interesting to see a movie with 90% on rottentomatoes, but 4.3/10 and all negative user reviews on IMDb. Who's right, the viewers or the critics?

My vote is with the critics on this one. "Trigger Man" is simple, intense, and well-made. People seem dissatisfied with the first half of the film, which is just three guys looking for deer to shoot in broad daylight. I don't hunt, but I'm pretty sure deer aren't active at noon. Regardless, the movie isn't about deer being hunted, it's about the three guys being hunted by an unseen hunter (or hunters).

If you're smart enough to realize that suspense is a lot more fun than action, you'll probably get something out of "Trigger Man." If not, you'll definitely want to skip it. There are plenty of dumb action movies for you anyway.

A simple story line but not gimmicky and indeed its ordinariness is what made the film interesting. Some scenes where there was no movement of any kind were too long. No doubt this was to create the sense of "ordinariness" but in actuality the situation was anything but ordinary because there were two killers lurking. The scenery was idyllic which, as with the ordinariness of the hunting trip generally, masked the evil hidden in this placid setting.