Sand

I'll give it a two for Denis Leary. He had some good lines, but that's it. What was the point? Where was the script? Who was supposed to act? A movie needs more than this one has to offer. Save the hour and a half to watch your hair grow, or fall out, whatever the case.

"Sand" is a pretty bad movie. I won't waste your time with too much information. The only reason it gets 5 out of ten from me is Kari Wuhrer. God, what a babe! Her opening scene, where she's reunited with her brother Jack on the beach and meets Ty for the 1st time, is prefect. Its beautifully played and is by far the best scene in the movie, for this alone I like it. Unfortunately the movie just stinks. The language is really offensive, I don't mean simply profanity, I mean offensive. Still it might be fun for some to see Lovitz playing married with Julie Delpy and Denis Leary just being around for no good reason. There is some nice music and some nice opening beach shots of Ty as a kid with his Mom. Still "Sand" sinks rather quickly into a montage and want to be Greek tragedy. But again Kari on the beach... Sigh..

It is an extreme challenge to find a sufficiently negative phrase to describe this movie. It is utterly boring, predictable, and without any interesting features whatsoever... no wait, that doesn't sound nearly negative enough. The plot isn't worthy of a newpaper cartoon strip, nothing much happens, the settings are uninteresting. You'd be better off sleeping or watching the clouds in the sky float by. The only provocative issue is the question it raises (for me) regarding why I let it remain on screen. No, wait, there's also the question regarding how anybody could make a film like this.

Normally I don't review movies I stopped watching halfway through, but this one is an exception because I watched it in fastforward til the end. I'll say this: Good casting all around, wonderful visual shots of the beach, cliffs, etc. But that's all this movie has to offer. Dull, dull, dull. C'mon scriptwriter, doesn't Tyler have a second memory of his mother?? Why put us through the same shots over and over again?? Do you wanna know why I rented this movie? Because Michael Vartan (Never Been Kissed) was on the cover, and that guy is HOT!! But c'mon Mike, if you're gonna star in a low budget drama/action film and do your usual puppy dog/ smoldering hunk-o-man thing you always do, could you at least have taken off your shirt, even once?? If you're going to do a boring, poorly written beach film, then at least give your female/gay male fans a reason to want to see it. And Mr. Screenwriter, if you're gonna have a good cast working your material, give them something to work with. I mean really. The first half was so DULL I stopped caring altogether. This was a movie where the lead guy was a Montgomery Clift protagonist/ good guy because that's who he is without explanation, and the bad guys are bad just because. It's like the movie was filmed without a script and the director said, "Okay, actors. Be yourselves, and ACTION!" Michael Vartan stood around with nothing to say, looking longingly into the distance, the redneck brothers slugged each other and playfought because that's what rednecks are supposed to do, and Denis Leary tried to say his lines real fast so as to make himself sound witty. The director needed to challenge his actors and the script needed to challenge the production. Routine with stock performances from good actors from better films, this moviegoer gives this film a big fat F. Nothing to see here, folks. Move along, move along.....

The ONLY reason I bothered with this at all is because of Kari Wuhrer, who is one of the sexiest women in the movies today. Unfortunately despite the bad language, drugs, violence and low budget effort of the film, it was so low budget they could not even afford for her to have partial nudity...

Dennis Leary is actually the films strongest character, and delivers his lines with the same larconic smirking as in everything else he has been in.

The story is generated in the post Pulp Fiction era, but lacks any of the character building, or intelligent script writing of a Tarantino.

For all that, it is a good "pass the time" film for an insomniac sometime after midnight. There is a gradual escalation of hostilities between the beach bums and the hard nosed family, with Tyler caught in the middle.

There are reflections of male bull headed behaviour, together with laddish immaturity, as well as camaraderie and pride.

All in all, it is a film that paints every bad aspect of 20th century man into one film.