A Cold Day in Hell

Any movie with Michael Madsen in it is a trademark of B-movie (B=Bad), definitely with poor screenplay, killing-me-over-and-over horrible deadbeat dialog, loose and stupid scenario/plot, mediocre or extremely bad directing, entry-level actors with poor or non-exist acting talent. This movie is no exception. Actors who acted in this movie always gave me an impression that they've suddenly forgotten their dialog, every word came up two second slow. Their performances were just too forced to look convincing. The costumes they wore were too modern, trying very hard to look cool. The gunfights in this movie also looked pretty phony too, especially when shot a guy with 5 shots overkill, no wonder the gun fighting scenes were littered so many brass shells. The gun powder blasts also sounded pretty unreal. The worst flaws of modern western B-movies were all included in this typically dragging one, i.e., everything looked just so unconvincingly unreal and tasteless like chewing a piece of cork.

Just watch the trailer and you can see this is an awful movie. Cheesy sound track, bad acting, and it looks like it was filmed using a digital camera. This "movie" looks like something someone made to put up on YouTube. Micheal Madsens name at the top of the cover...really? He's barely in the movie. Madsen is an accomplished actor. I do hope this movie is not an indication of where his career is headed. If so, he needs to switch managers. The other actors in this movie sound and look as if it's their first time in front of a camera. Reciting lines. Terrible movie. Hardly worth the time it took to write this review. Spend your money on some other form of entertainment, not this drivel.

First of all, let me say that the purpose of watching a film is for entertainment. If the majority of viewers are not entertained then the film missed it's mark. Chris Forbes - your comments in the above mentioned "review" were as poorly written as your film. You can't rebuke other reviews of western fans because they don't like your movie. There is no personal attack here. It is simply a judgment passed on the work itself. To call names and insult your audience is amateur, at best. If you had done your job as a director you would be reading reviews that I am sure you would be more proud of. Do what professionals do; read the reviews and learn what you need to do different next time around. The "whining" you are referring to seems to be coming from ForbesFilm.

Now, for my opinion of the film - Chris Forbes needs to be a director and nothing more. There are many things done right here. A recognizable name is cast in the film, some shooting was done well. However, you need to bring a real camera man on board with you. You need to let a professional musician do the music. You need to get a real screenplay and tell that story. You can't do it all. For a one man show I'd have to rate it 2 stars.

I would have given this poorly named movie a ZERO had the option been there, but I suppose IMDb site owners have not factored into their calculations the probability of that ever happening. This movie has done it with style. Had the phrase "3:10 to Yuma RIDES UP TO TRUE GRIT" not screamed out at me to give it a chance, the cover alone was a sufficient tip off that this flick was a flop. I had given up watching the movie at just the exact time when I sensed my intelligence could no longer be insulted, which was just about 35 minutes into it. I was nonetheless mesmerized by its outlandish plot, inept camera work and the "actors" natural rigid performance which is no performance at all. These three ingredients I thought are what make a good comedy.

I love Westerns, so when I saw that a recent film release had Michael Madsen in the lead role of one, I was excited.

Sometimes there are low budget films in which a budding director's talents can be seen and appreciated. Such directors need encouragement and guidance, and when they get it, we are often rewarded with truly inspired film making.

There are also people who, by some miracle or fortune of birth or happenstance get to produce, write and direct a movie, but who we hope will try another occupation for their own sake (and ours).

Try as I might, I could find no scene that wasn't victimized by poor camera angles, horrible writing, and just plain bad acting. We can forgive the cheesy sets and amateurish sound editing -- these are the first things to suffer in low budget films. But the Director Forbes (who is also the DOP) handles the camera like a news reporter (apparently there was only one camera in use, so it is doubly important to use it well, have a longer shot list and apply more energy to filming each shot), with strait-on-face closeups that make you expect a journalist to pop up with microphone in hand. This indicates an impoverished shot list and subsequently is just plain agonizing to sit through.

There is evidence that some of the unknown actors have talent, but the moments one might see this are rare, and they are often victims of a shot that sidelines them to favor the lead or some burdensome, unnecessary background ambiance -- and lack of directing talent has these supporting actors actually diminishing the lead's scenes, rather than actually supporting them. So, as a result, we don't know if Forbes was just too timid to support aggressive retakes and make manifest what might have been a more creative shot list, or he didn't buy enough camera time, or he's just lazy and uninspired.

About 30 minutes into the film, we find ourselves begging Madsen to pull the thing out of it's hole with sheer force of personality, but no dice. If someone told me Madsen was ordered to do this film as some sort of community service penance, I'd be willing to believe them. Still, with such horrific writing, he sometimes manages to deliver his lines as well as any decent actor could, given the awful material he had to work with.

We must heap responsibility on a director for a film's worthiness, because even a director that has been given a horrible script can make at least some of it shine if he/she is talented enough. That's not the case here with Forbes, however, since he is also one of the writers -- making this appear to be exactly what it is -- a vanity project by someone who got/had some money and wanted to do a movie (he also is a producer, writer, DOP, editor and songwriter for the film). What fun! In short, this is a dreadful, annoyingly bad film made by One-Man-Band Forbes who appears to be not so talented in any one of the roles he's assumed here -- even his tedious, predictable soundtrack seems to be garage-band inspired and is consequently weirdly out-of-place. My advice to the director is to attend film school from year one if he insists on pursuing a career as a film maker.

I've vigorously thrown this movie into my "Tragic Waste of Time, Energy, and Money But At Least The Crew Got Paid" file.