Cross

Given incredible power by an ancient Celtic cross, Callan (Brian Austin Green) continues to fight evil... Now, joined by a team of weapons experts, Callan battles an unstoppable empire in Los Angeles.

I want to find the words to describe this film without being disrespectful, but it is just not a good movie. I see the potential, and some moments are better than others, but the film wavers between humor and seriousness with a cacophony of sound and juxtaposition of images that hurts the mind. Some films, notably "The Spirit", have balanced this well. This film has not. Would it make more sense if I had read the comic? Probably. But as a comic fan, I never heard of this one, so I think it is safe to say few people will know what is going on any more than I did. I learned a new word, though: Anzshlastic. Does it mean anything? Probably not.

Seemingly, the movie was made to coincide with the Green Lantern movie. Not that there is any connection, but someone here has a glowing green cross that gives him super powers. Sounds like another hero's ring. Beyond that, no connection, and the plot is a big mess. There is the concept of finding the bloodlines of the Greek gods. For some reason, only one person has the bloodline when you would think all their distant cousins would, too. And there are multiple villains, with little background offered about them.

The dialogue is written for a ten-year old. Sometimes we get decent one-liners (most of which come from Backfire, Jake Busey's character) and there was a good Gary Busey "Point Break" joke. But often we have everything dumbed down. Gunnar (Vinnie Jones) says over and over again that he is immortal and will be the last to die. Yeah, I got it. Did he have to repeat it? No. All this does is take a great actor like Jones and make him look like a fool.

The press release is far from accurate, too. It says "beautiful, young women start disappearing". Young, maybe. Beautiful? Hardly. And what is this about Gunnar being an immortal Viking? That never plays into the plot at all, and he clearly has an English rather than Norse accent. The only thing really going for this film is the cast. Besides those mentioned, we also have Brian Austin Green, Tom Sizemore, Michael Clarke Duncan, Danny Trejo, Lew Temple and C. Thomas Howell. How such a great ensemble ended up in this stinker is beyond me.

Nowhere in the press release or on the DVD cover is there a single quote from a review. Also, it arrived for me to review a week after it was released. This leads me to one conclusion: the people behind this film know it is not good and want to avoid more bad coverage (though, to do that, they should never have sent it at all). Possibly redeeming it is a director's commentary (I have not listened). There are deleted scenes, but those amount to single sentences trimmed from various spots. Why they were cut at all is beyond me. In short, avoid this film like the plague. Besides Jake Busey, it is a failure (and that is a sad thing when Busey is the best part of your film)

I cannot work out if this film is that bad deliberately or worse that they didn't realise. The acting was beyond cheese, even rank stifling cheese. Not one member of the cast stood out as anything other than awful, wooden, reluctant and hardly present.

Maybe I'm being harsh, perhaps they did everything they could with a script that I'm pretty sure was written by a couple of 12 year old kids blitzed out in a comic book euphoric haze.

The score was bland and occasionally misplaced enough break what little concentration it took to focus on the film. If there was any directing I must have missed it, perhaps it took place after the credits. Special effects were special only in the way they managed to get some out of about a dollar ninety five and I'm sorry to say they didn't even get value for money.

I've tried and tried, for about 15 seconds, to think of any redeeming feature or angle to this film. I failed. Kind of suits the film really.....

Actually, I have to agree with the message board post - Cross is an "action-comedy". It is not advertised as an Oscar film. It is a comic book hero movie. And it delivers. The movie takes the fantastic and plays it for keeps. It is a comic book adventure of fun, magic, awesome action, and an amazing cast! Viewers have been spoiled by big budget action movies with too many special effects and not enough of a story - as if enough effects will make up for the fact that there was no character development or plot. However, Cross is a story with a pay off. It is an homage to the campy cult classics, but the first one to be stuck in the pages of a comic book.

As an indie filmmaker, I know the blood, sweat, and tears that goes into creating a film. After watching "Cross," I have nothing but utmost respect towards this film!! It is an instant classic because it has all the ingredients that a quality film needs: big weapons, clever witty script, sarcastic humor, large explosions, great locations, gorgeous cars, damsels in distress...I could go on and on for ages!! To know that a fellow indie filmmaker was able to gather up all of those amazing stars...I mean amazing!! We are talking roles from Danny Trejo, C.Thomas Howell, and Billy Zabka. We are talking lead roles from The Michael Clark Duncan and Vinnie Jones. Tons more too!! The fact that these actors signed on to this project in the first place is proof that this film is an inspiration to all of us indie filmmakers out there. I say bravo! A job well done on creating this instant classic!!

I felt a lot of heart went into making this movie, but it just doesn't make the grade.

Cheesy one liners, though delivered well and fit the spirit of the movie well, still end up being cheesy one-liners.

Special effects were worse than what you would see in an episode of a Sci-Fi Channel original or TV episode like Stargate.

The only thing that got this movie beyond TV was the mid level, mostly washed up actors, who have been popular in the past, or were in good movies at one point in their careers.

Regarding Danny Trejo at the top of the Bill, he shows up for literally less than 20 seconds, and wasn't even part of the movie from what I could tell.

Names like Shark,Ranger,War,Riot,and Backfire make me think they did everything they could do put the movie at C or worse. It's like they didn't even make a pretension of trying to be better than that. Almost like they all got together and said "let's make a really good D-movie, and let's work really hard to make it that way!"

Anyways, to sum it up...The heart and hard work was there, and the acting mostly decent, but I feel with the cast and the story line it could of been better...Maybe even end up something of a cult flick, but it doesn't quite get there.