The Local

The story is overly simplistic and melodramatic, like some slightly better than after-school teen film.

I.e., yet another boring inner city drug drama.

Impressive technically, but little more. The acting is all impressive (excluding Eberle who is also the writer and would have been better off writing himself a cameo role). The score, soundtrack, and filming all help make the film tolerable. Hopefully everyone except Eberle will get better films to be in from now on.

So what do you watch instead? Gamer has some similar sub-story lines and written into a more interesting film overall.

A drug dealer who happens to be clean himself (Dan Eberle) roams around town on a variety of missions, finding himself getting into fights at every turn. One of his chief missions? Rescuing a heroin-addicted daughter for a concerned father... whose motives are unclear.

Let me lay this on the line: Dan Eberle is the man of the future for crime dramas. He has written and directed a film in the style of Guy Ritchie's "Snatch" and "Two Smoking Barrels" -- also producing and starring in it. When this disc arrived in my mail, I was unsure about it. I receive many low budget piles of rubbish. This one is by far the most professional independent film I've ever had the pleasure to review.

What really adds to "The Local" is the clear plot of a single protagonist, somewhat of an anti-hero. Ritchie's films are beautiful, and carry a lot of star power, but Eberle cuts through the tangled intertwining plots to deliver one distinct narrative. Yes, there are still multiple characters with multiple motives, which really adds to the story... but we never have to keep track of five different plots to make sure we understand where they lead.

You like drug dealer films? Mafia films? Gun fights? Fist fights? This has it all, in the grimy streets to rundown apartment complexes. Beautiful cinematography and a respectable score. There's no reason "The Local" couldn't have been released in theaters across the country. Believe me, I've seen a lot worse in the cinema. Do yourself a favor and get a copy of this film if you are into this sort of genre... "The Local" could be a cult favorite someday soon.

Okay look, this movie flat out sucks. The "action scenes" are only brutal if you're a child who's never been in a fight, or seen a decent movie. "Collateral" had short, relatively brutal and engaging fight scenes, "Snatch" had a brutal efficiency to the violence in it. This movie has BUTCHERED "flutter sequences", where there is no fluid attachment to the motion, and what you're really supposed to believe, is that a bunch of fat guys in cameo who are coked up are bad asses. Or that the main character is from a video game, where he receives a horrendous beating, charges his super meter, and suddenly "finish him!" rings out and bam, opponent dead from a nonsensical and badly edited series of moves, I mean seriously, these action sequences wouldn't make sense to Michael Bay. If you want a gritty and violent affair, that's fun to watch as well as professionally filmed and acted, check out "Harsh Times", please don't watch this pile of dung.

Went into this with pretty high hopes and honestly the first half hour made me a bit weary. I thought i was going to be extremely disappointed. But from the half hour mark until the very end, this movie was real, raw, and honest. This is the first time I have heard of Dan Eberle, although he does look familiar, and he did an incredible job at portraying his emotions and confusion about where his place in life is. I always have an immense amount of respect for people who can write, direct, and star in the same movie. The acting from each character didn't come off as strong or over the top. In fact, it didn't seem like acting at all, it was very natural. Happy to say that I was impressed with this film, and I'm very glad that I watched it. Great underlying story of the importance of family, the support needed to be clean, and how we can go out of our way to help others that are in worse shape than ourselves.

Reminded me of The Bourne Supremacy, but much better because the sense of reality this film brings. This was an intense ride from beginning to end.

I was surprised to discover that Dan Eberle is the writer, and also the director and star, WOW. He has a very firm grasp of what he wants, what he's doing, the craft, very difficult to pull all these roles off and very few do it well. My hat's off to you Daniel, you're a very talented young man, keep it up.

Pay no mind to those that dissed this film, they sound jealous and ignorant.

I love that there are no stars in it. ALL the actors are excellent and totally believable, DP, color and edit, just really great stuff.