The Last Sentinel

With 3 or 4 familiar names, I thought this would be a passable evening's entertainment after so often enjoying Katee's work on Galactica and most recently, The Mandalorian. But, I can only say that she must have needed the money, because this script is so abysmally bad and so far below her abilities. A high-schooler could have written this screenplay and done as good a job with a few of his/her classmates, an abandoned factory in the desert and some leftover storm trooper costumes from their last sci fi festival. Came so close to turning this off several times. Just a bad movie on so many levels and I cannot believe anyone financed this piece of junk. Listening to the rifle's AI voice, alone, was almost intolerable and who would have imagined that a notable martial artist could make a fight scene look laughable? Just stay away, it's not worth your time.

Where do I start - movie started with an interesting monologue that made me think its actually worth watching. But everything later was one disappointment after another.

For starters, action scenes are too long and repetitive. It seems like they tried to fill the void with guys in black rubber suits and blue goggles marching and some horror music playing in the background... oooooh, so frightening! There are lots of (long) shooting scenes where super-soldiers were too dumb to take cover but instead stood still in plain sight - no wonder they got slaughtered.

Most of the movie is in ruins with the girl and hero guy and very few other actors, lot of survivalist crap one-liners, absolutely predictable plot and cardboard characters.

Storyline is very weak, seems it was either written for a 12-year-old or by a 12-year-old, its hard to tell which is it.

And I only gave it a three (and watched the whole thing) because of Katee Sackhoff aka Starbuck, because I like BSG series a lot and respect the actors there - this movie is total and utter nonsense that deserves subzero ratings.

Don Wilson stars as Tallis an elite soldier who is sent in to wipe out the drones. Seems the drones are robotic police officers who are trying to wipe out humans (Although they aren't seen doing anything outside of shooting at Wilson) and our burned out hero is aided by Katee Sackhoff who inspires him to fight to the death, in this completely routine Sci-Fi action flick. The only thing The Last Sentinel has in its favor is that it far exceeds any Sci-Fi channel movie, however the reason is because The Last Sentinel wasn't made for the Sci-Fi channel and hence why the movie is competently made even if it isn't all that interesting. Don Wilson is okay in the lead role and some of the shootouts are well staged, but generally this is mediocre stuff that doesn't leave much of an impression. The movie is so underwritten that one can't get into it, while surprisingly Wilson doesn't use any of his kick-boxing skills. Well he might kick somebody once but generally he uses his talking gun to fight these assembly line villains without so much as breaking a sweat. The cast includes Steven Bauer (Far away from his Scarface days, poor Steven) Bokeem Woodbine (Far away from his Freeway days) and Keith David (Far away from his The Thing and They Live days) who only contribute cameos. Once again this is a fairly well made B.movie but it's really nothing you haven't seen before and for the most part this is forgettable fodder only for undemanding viewers or fans of the star.

* * out of 4-(Fair)

From the bad flak on IMDb this movie is getting I was expecting something completely different, production values high, awesome musical score and really fun action. This is obviously not huge budget, but who cares, the film feels energetic and exciting. I do not know Kate Sackhoffs work on BSG, there seemed an exuberance and excitement to this movie that I really liked regardless of it's budget short comings. It was quite obviously supposed to be comic book in nature and to that end it succeeded very well. As Sci Fi style movies about a future Earth over-run by drone cyborgs this film was a really fun contender.

Again, I've read some print reviews that enjoyed the film, and I enjoyed it immensely, I recommend to fans of action or sci-fi, without reservations or concerns.

I enjoyed the development of the 700th super troopers, the story behind their creation, and their ultimate demise, I enjoyed the artificial intelligence rifle scope, I though it was cool. This is a very violent movie and maybe that is the problem for a lot of people, peoples heads are blown off, eyes hacked out and humans torn to pieces, personally I like that stuff.

For some reason I thought going into this that this was a new mini-series on SciFi for Katee Sackholm since Battlestar is supposedly closing up shop after the next season. I probably don't need to tell you that I was wrong, but boy am I glad I was. This was such a terrible movie on so many levels.

First, there is absolutely no character development - None! Seriously! And, of course, that doesn't keep the two main characters from having sex, 'cause, well, that's what a guy and a girl in a super low budget awful film do.

Add to the lack of character development the completely re-hashed plot idea (robots take over the world - Terminator, The Matrix, and hundreds of other films) and the unbelievably undeveloped story line and you get a terrible, terrible film.

As I was watching it I kept looking to my wife and saying, "And this is what happens when you shoot a movie without an actual script. You see, you just set up a whole bunch of fight sequences and then say action and film." I've never been in the military and I could have given the film more realistic guidance on how soldiers behave in war.

Rarely do I sit and hope for a film to end, but I did with this one. Sci-Fi should funnel its money into the programs it cares about - its series, not these ridiculous, written-by-monkeys, movies.