Check Point

This film is so bad that it must have been made this bad on purpose. If you watch it from that perspective it is actually pretty funny. Grab your favorite drug of choice and let the laughs begin!

I don't know any other way to put it. This movie isn't just bad, it's shockingly bad. It's wonderful in it's horribleness.

The raw acting talent of the foliage on the set are matched only by Mindy Robinson's cleavage.

The special effects are so bad that it makes a low-budget SciFy channel movie look like the latest Roland Emmerich mega flick.

And the dialog, well, I think I can give it a pass based on the assumption that each scene was written by a different person just minutes after the previous scene was shot.

All of this could be forgiven were it not for the fact that the entire story is just disjointed, doesn't resolve anything, and didn't appear to be going anywhere anyway.

This is quite possibly the most disgraceful, unrealistic film I've ever seen in my life depicting military in general, let alone my proud Corps. Trust me skip this.

Part of me was intrigued before watching 'Check Point'. It sounded interesting with a great concept, but it did look like a not very well made, ridiculous and by the numbers film with not particularly good actors so there was a little apprehension. Saw 'Check Point' anyway out of curiosity, being intrigued by the idea and having been a lot of low-budget films recently (most not very good to put it lightly).

'Check Point' managed to be worse than expected, even with mixed expectations. It started off pretty badly, got even worse quickly and never recovered. It picks up marginally at the end, when it gets a little more eventful and wasn't as dull. Sadly that's saying little, it feels too late when that happens and the climax is badly bungled and clumsy.

On a visual level, 'Check Point' looked shoddy. Drab and simplistic, with haphazard editing, far from slick photography and very artificial-looking visuals on the whole. The scenery is one of the two least bad aspects of the film, but the low budget look of everything else in the production values makes it difficult to appreciate.

The sound is intrusive and obvious, making a waste of the other least bad aspect of the film (the music, which is a little more than the one-note, repetitive stuff it could have been) and the direction has no sense of atmosphere or pacing, nothing to be thrilled by and nothing much engaging.

Script is awkward-sounding and ponderous, with lines that do make one cringe. A lot of it is gibberish and juvenile, with a stilted improvisatory feel that shouldn't have made it past draft stages.

On top of that, the story goes through the motions with no tension, suspense or thrills, a lot of intelligence-insulting ridiculousness, implausibility and pacing so dull that it makes a reasonably short length much longer. It is very derivative and parts also felt incomplete. The action sequences are more preposterous and by the numbers than they are thrilling or fun. The terrible way they look also hinder them.

Characters are basically every stereotype in the book it seems and are one-dimensional caricatures with no likeability or development and with the inability to behave logically. The acting is very poor all round, even from those who have been in films for years and in roles they should have been perfect for.

In summary, very poor. 2/10 Bethany Cox

I gave it four stars, because the cast was not-too-bad. Lots of pretty women as eye candy. They also provided several cat fights. At the one hour mark, all the Doctor Jekylls turn into Mister Hydes. The war begins. The action gives us relief from the bad script. And then it ends. Seen on Tubi, the free streaming site, which has some older theater films, lots of DVD indies, and now, some live TV.