Checkmate

A B-grade movie and a bad one at that. The film obviously had a small budget and it showed.

The film lacked atmosphere. There was no ambiance of background sounds, noise etc. The scenes outdoors where far too quiet. Plus where is the public? There were no people seen in the background. Making the scenes look obvious they were filed in a studio (rather than on location).

And what's worse than the acting was the lack of basic FX. Wait, I change that, the acting was worse.

Don't waste one and half hours of your time watching this. That time is better spent watching the grass grow.

Danny Glover, a good actor, many fine performances in the past, must be in need of money to associate his name with this piece of trash. I am sure this film will never be shown in any cinema, in any European country, the United States, Canada, Australia, etc. This is one of those films, here today,gone tomorrow, forget it ever existed. If this film is released on DVD, in your neighbourhood, avoid it like the plague. So far all the reviews, I have read, before my review, have stated similar reviews. Danny Glover, true, their may not be too many roles out in the film industry for you to star in, but do not perform in these type of films.

Unfortunately no amount of f-words can save this immature and epicly sad excuse of a movie. We all have to pay the rent, I get that. Sometimes it just hurts to watch it happen. Checkmate tries to be so bad-ass it falls flat on its face from the very first frame. Disconnected plot, no character development, crazy amount of cuss words, words of wisdom outtro etc. The turkeylist goes on. How did Glover and Aston even end up in this mess? I would seriously think a seventh grader could put together a more interesting script. This is by far the worst film I've seen the last 10 years. We're not talking funny bad here either. Low budget just got a new low - and I'm not even gonna comment on the girl with the samurai sword.

**** The movie is plain awful **** It was on Netflix, saw Danny Glover and expected something. What an unbearable movie. Normally I read the reviews and STOP. I never like to post any commentary. This time, the movie was so horrible, I broke my promise to myself, created an Yahoo! ID, confirmed it and created the IMDb id, confirmed it and then typed it. I am so determined to post this so that no one goes through the horror of watching this movie. Waterboarding may not be this horrible. And what is with the F* bombs, is it supposed to make them look 'bad'. Their acting (or lack of that) ensures that they are bad. What a horrible piece of movie. They could have sent the money on this to some charity organization. Is this a piece done for some laundering ?

It's funny that the movie references chess for its title, because there's barely any hint of intelligent present. Ambitiously, it mixes many subplots and alternating timelines together even though Checkmate can't even get one perspective right. Underutilized actors, excessive amount of profanity and utter lack of logic make this movie into a terribly sketchy experience.

Story revolves around the events of a bank heist. Unlike recent thrillers where there's a clear plan, Checkmate goes old school with mask and gun through the front door. There are a lot of subplots slapped together for any dramatic effect. They can't all miss their marks, right? Sadly, and incredibly, they can.

It's nearly amazing that not one character feels believable. You have the sniper priest, desperate thugs, mafia kingpins and poor sick kid, all of which have zero on-screen credibility. The pacing is completely off, it might try to shift between different perspectives for better development, but the shoddy delivery only makes narrative worse.

Script is all kind of swearwords. The most used lines are variation of "F this, F that". I'm not kidding, it's literally repetition of F-bomb while a few of more notable actors like Danny Glover and Vinnie Jones spew gibberish from facebook cat poster or random quote book. You'll hear crude profanity or pretentious bible quote for the entire movie as well as screeching repetitive soundtracks.

Then, there's the problem of the logic. The robbers put on their mask on the step of the back where camera and witness might spot them. They voluntarily run away from cover and shoot a la Rambo. There are so many things wrong with the logic, but the movie just brushes it off as though audience wouldn't notice.

Checkmate plays with mindless plots and dribbling profanity. It's a chain of awful sequences thrown randomly together that deserves no viewing.