Sand

Usually I have a lot of luck with these small scale movies. I looked at the cast. Leary, Lovitz, Delpy, Wuhrer, Estevez. How bad could it be? Unfortunately the answer was...pretty bad. I have a hard time remembering a movie that had such poor execution of a plot that had potential.

The ONLY reason I bothered with this at all is because of Kari Wuhrer, who is one of the sexiest women in the movies today. Unfortunately despite the bad language, drugs, violence and low budget effort of the film, it was so low budget they could not even afford for her to have partial nudity...

Dennis Leary is actually the films strongest character, and delivers his lines with the same larconic smirking as in everything else he has been in.

The story is generated in the post Pulp Fiction era, but lacks any of the character building, or intelligent script writing of a Tarantino.

For all that, it is a good "pass the time" film for an insomniac sometime after midnight. There is a gradual escalation of hostilities between the beach bums and the hard nosed family, with Tyler caught in the middle.

There are reflections of male bull headed behaviour, together with laddish immaturity, as well as camaraderie and pride.

All in all, it is a film that paints every bad aspect of 20th century man into one film.

Normally I don't review movies I stopped watching halfway through, but this one is an exception because I watched it in fastforward til the end. I'll say this: Good casting all around, wonderful visual shots of the beach, cliffs, etc. But that's all this movie has to offer. Dull, dull, dull. C'mon scriptwriter, doesn't Tyler have a second memory of his mother?? Why put us through the same shots over and over again?? Do you wanna know why I rented this movie? Because Michael Vartan (Never Been Kissed) was on the cover, and that guy is HOT!! But c'mon Mike, if you're gonna star in a low budget drama/action film and do your usual puppy dog/ smoldering hunk-o-man thing you always do, could you at least have taken off your shirt, even once?? If you're going to do a boring, poorly written beach film, then at least give your female/gay male fans a reason to want to see it. And Mr. Screenwriter, if you're gonna have a good cast working your material, give them something to work with. I mean really. The first half was so DULL I stopped caring altogether. This was a movie where the lead guy was a Montgomery Clift protagonist/ good guy because that's who he is without explanation, and the bad guys are bad just because. It's like the movie was filmed without a script and the director said, "Okay, actors. Be yourselves, and ACTION!" Michael Vartan stood around with nothing to say, looking longingly into the distance, the redneck brothers slugged each other and playfought because that's what rednecks are supposed to do, and Denis Leary tried to say his lines real fast so as to make himself sound witty. The director needed to challenge his actors and the script needed to challenge the production. Routine with stock performances from good actors from better films, this moviegoer gives this film a big fat F. Nothing to see here, folks. Move along, move along.....

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.

This movie wasn't actually so bad. A little bit put-up, not some great love story or stupid American action Rambo style, but it was realistic. Well, that's what one brother should do after some ugly nasty scums tried to ape his sister. I expected worse, so this movie is something I don't regret I watched. Norman Reedus played absolutely professional and I have no remarks to his part. Too many talking between the dad and the guy with the black jacket, too many similar scenes, not enough playing by Tylor, who was supposed to be the main character in this movie. Well, I am glad he didn't played much, he was too spineless. But I have to say I think that was a good movie. Much better than The Beanicks, Beat or Dark Harbor. I'd like to watch it again with a better quality and a beer ;)