Sacrifice

Vulgarities or not, I'm always more attracted to good storyline. Seeing that it's a recent movie, I thought at the very least it should be more presentable. Alas, what do I see, but gratuitous almost sex scenes (with no private part exposure), excessive foul language, and bad acting from the side characters left a nasty nasty taste in my mouth.

The acting is even more forced and unnatural than acting school, and these mafias (not the most difficult role) can't even do it convincingly. However I must make special mention and (I specially went to find out his name)Zion Lee playing Rook if i'm not wrong, the guy who is naked half the time and speaks nothing but F words, wins the champion in bad acting. It's so bad, I don't even feel like wasting my words to explain why.

Heavily laden with drug abuse, sexual content, and obscenities, on the overall, it's crass and unwarranted. A movie experience that people in this century shouldn't even be experiencing.

Sacrifice has a pretty solid story going for it. A haunted cop befriends a priest at a local church all while dealing with his next case. The story takes off with a drug dealer who wants out and is denied that option, so he steals a statue filled with drugs and hides it in a local church. Now the dealers are after him and Cuba Gooding Jr must protect the dealers little sister.

The direction shines in parts and in other parts it seems very dull. Without going into much detail of the story, the film could have been much better with different music and more solid editing. The film is edited as if it is a TV movie.

Pros: Solid Perormances from Cuba Gooding Jr, Christian Slater, Devon Bostick, and Kim Coates.

Good Ending Shootouts and very good emotional ties between characters.

Cons: The editing, it really hurts the films. The music does not fit and is quite cheap. Some supporting players are very bad in their performances as well. The statistics in the opening and end credits are boring and take away from the story.

All in all its fairly entertaining especially in the last 20 minutes, but editing may make you cringe in spots.

Wow, what a trainwreck. Where to begin...I suppose by this time you have more than recognized Cuba's downward spiral but teaming him up with Slater is an even more embarrassing turn for both actors. Slater has been pawning off his creepy yet campy style for years now and occasionally pulls of an entertaining performance (Dolan's Cadallac, He was a quiet man), but here he just swims in the dreck. Horribly miscast as a priest, he can do little more but smirk at the camera and look at his shoes. Devon Bostik is laughable as a drug dealer - I mean really, Wimpy's kid's big brother is now a tough guy? Just a total mess and a shame for all involved. I had hopes that Cuba would rebound at some point, but he seems determine to join Wesley and Steven Seagal in the DTV "worst of" series. Seriously, don't waste your time or money on this, bad bad bad.

well, from the first scene to the end... a waste of my time... this movie is sooooo bad. When I saw and read the box at the video store, I thought: okay I like Cuba and Christian... til I started to watch... I gave it my due attention and suffered until the end but OMG... time I will never get back...

My first impressions were: Bad lighting, bad cinematography, bad direction, and then... bad acting! This looks more like a film school project gone wrong then a feature film... It even looks like it was shot on early HD ENG cameras...

And if you are brave, start watching the behind the scenes featurette... they didn't even use a proper mic to record these (terribly done) interviews. This whole project should have been terminated from day 1.

Was there anyone really clamoring for a reuniting of Cuba Gooding Jr. and Christian Slater, especially considering their previous team-up ("Lies & Illusions") was one of the worst direct-to-DVD movies of recent years? To make matters worse, this production is not only Canadian, but it's written and directed by one of Canada's worst filmmakers (Damian Lee). To be fair, the end results are somewhat better than "Lies & Illusions". For a cheap Canadian movie, the visual look of the movie is slicker and more expensive-looking that you might think. And it's nice to see a Canadian movie actually set in Canada (though at times the movie seems reluctant to admit that fact.) But overall, the movie is very forgettable. The combination of Lee's bad direction and inadequate screenplay make a number of moments in the movie somewhat incoherent. Gooding's performance is nothing special, and Slater is unconvincing and unintentionally amusing playing a priest. The movie isn't aggressively bad, but it creeps along at a sluggish pace because there simply isn't enough story here.

Come on, Cuba and Christian! I know you've screwed up your careers enough to be now stuck in direct-to-DVD productions, but surely you could still find better scripts than this! Sure, I know you have bills to pay, but you could at least volunteer your services for a great director's independent film between making schlock like this.