Very Bad Team

Let's be clear: this is an ugly film. Many things (too many to list them) are under the common standard so I don't expect you to like it.

I personally enjoyed it, however: it's ironic (so ironic that I wondered if it were made ugly on purpose). It's full of great artists, starting from James Caan and ending with Jeremy Renner (movie's executive producer). It has a good plot (it could have been a very nice graphic novel), dumb enough to not be taken too seriously…

But above all it transmits a special kind of fun, as if the cast (which was made of very well known actors such as Noel Clarke, Sam Huntington, Katie McGrath or Matt Dillon's brother, Kevin) had a really good time playing bad and good guys in one of the cheapest locations you could imagine, in Sofia, Bulgaria.

Movies use ironic titles like The Expendables or The Losers to a varying degree of success, The Throwaways however, is a tragic commentary of how bad it is. Every aspect lacks any tact or poise, it's a near parody of itself and it would've probably worked better that way. However, it still has jarring shift of tone and excessive hacking mumbo jumbo delivered by sloppy acting from just about everyone involved.

This is an example of how espionage thriller can go wrong. The story is fixed and rigid, a hacker creates a team of misfits to intercept some plan of some device. It's all hazy and produced in such underwhelming fashion that none of the urgency is believable. These guys might just be some random people from street who accidentally stumble with one another. Safe to say, there's no chemistry to speak of.

Acting is terribly poor, everyone has one expression which they do repeatedly. The main character seems distraught and his trademark sigh becomes repelling after thirty minutes. Plenty of hacking slangs are mentioned although audience who wants to see a realistic approach on technology will be disappointed when seeing the crude interface from the 80s beeps erratically as the on screen characters pretend to hit buttons and know what they are doing.

It also tries to set up any human drama, which seems more like a blooper if one is being kind. The visual utilizes shaky cams for nearly the entirety of the time, colors are drab and uninspiring as well. Furthermore, some scenes are looking as though they are haphazardly slapped together from other cheap movies, only done in inferior manner. It's an exhausting undertaking to keep watching this debacle.

If anything good comes from this, it's probably puns of its title. Just throw it away.

I was drawn into this film from the beginning when some police turn up at a hacker's (Drew Reynolds - Sam Huntington) secret hideaway and I thought he was just going to get arrested but then he nearly makes a get away on a hidden motorbike. This motorbike chase was very good to watch, because during it, the hacker uses some cool gadgets to disable some of the police cars and almost gets away. And I would have liked to have seen more gadgets like this but unfortunately after getting arrested there is only a little bit of action until the final shootout at the end of the film.

When Drew is arrested the police ask him for some help to stop another hacker who has gained access to an encryption key called Pantheon that he is using to shut down power in Chicago and he can also use it to gain access to anywhere on the internet and beyond.

Drew agrees to help them on one condition, that he chooses his own team to work with.

Like I said at the start there's not much action after the arrest, but we are kept entertained by Drew's witty one liners which reminded me of some Ryan Reynold's jokes. Unfortunately though Drew also uses some complicated technical terms which made me feel lost at times. We are also kept entertained when we see that the team he chooses are a bunch of misfits that don't look likely to succeed.

The final shootout is good because it has some good sniper shots, some funny moments like when one of the team, Fisher (Kevin Dillon) tries to shoot a tank with a bazooka and misses and hits his teammate's (Dmitri - Christian Hillborg) car. And a good fight between another team member called Gloria (Katie McGarth) and a brutal villain, Bes (Amber Jean Rowan.) There is also a countdown until the bad hacker sets off a bomb and it's up to Drew to stop him. This may sound intense but actually turns out to be one of longest countdowns I've seen. And I would have also like to have seen the bad hacker put up more of a fight and look more tough but instead his character looks like a skinny teenager who smokes weed and it's actually Bes who stands out as the main villain.

Overall though I enjoyed most of the film and I'm glad I didn't throwaway the chance to watch it because I was quite lucky to come across this on Netflix when it was quite late one night and I went for it because it's only about 90 minutes long and the trailer looked good. I might also watch it again in a year or two... If I can't find anything else on Netflix.

A mildly entertaining action flick, no more no less. Rather bloodless in the action scenes and many of the jokes have been done before in better films...

Looks like a pilot for a network US TV show, only a couple of f-words would put it apart from any show on CBS or whatever. To be honest, I only bothered with it thanks to the gorgeous Katie Mcgrath being in it (I'm a big fan of Merlin... damn, why can't anyone put this lovely and talented actress in a BIG film, and no, JURASSIC WORLD doesn't count because she was in it for about five minutes... ;o))

It's an OK watch if you're feeling a bit undemanding...

As you might guess, I'm not on any payroll from the movie makers. Bad acting, bad plot, bad photography, bad cutting and actually, bad picture quality. Use HD cams next time, guys. This must be a re-cut TV-pilot that got caned by obvious reasons.

It's like watching a really bad rerun of A-Team, but without the charm, action or the comparatively amazing FX. If you really need to see how an action/hacker movie should not be done, this is for you. The computer graphics look like they were made on a low-priced early 1990's computer with a Win 95 OS. Shall I go on? Please refrain from making any more movie attempts.