Avarice

John V. Soto is an Australian indie auteur who likes to genre hop. That is, his productions to date tend to change category from release to release. What they all tend to have in common however are the tell-tales of a low-budget indie namely: the excessive use of strange background music to fill gaps; excessive use of garish lighting (greens, blues) to add excitement to unexciting scenes; wooden scripts; and wooden acting. What makes AVARICE stand out is the very smart idea of a professional archer caught in a DIE HARD situation, and then using her mad skills to overcome the predicament. It's a clever idea, but the cleverness lasts for about 10 minutes, tops, and then we are right back where we started.((Designated "IMDb Top Reviewer." Please check out my list "167+ Nearly-Perfect Movies (with the occasional Anime or TV miniseries) you can/should see again and again (1932 to the present))

Just watched this Australian action thriller, and unlike some reviewers comments it was slow, it moved along quite nicely - especially when the tension ramps up after the home invasion. Great unique use of archery throughout. Gillian Alexy brought across her stress believably and .Alexandra Nell as the baddie was, well, bad-ass! Again some faulted the lighting and music choices, but if they checked out director John Soto's other films they would see it's becoming a cool signature. You know you are in a Soto thriller! Well done gang. There are a lot of great indie flicks coming out of Western Australia so will hunt down some more...

The premise was simple enough. A dysfunctional family needs some help to work it all out. A home invasion might be just the trick. Expert archer Mom coming to the rescue could be very cool if not for her forgetting things all along the way. Especially the one thing her Dad tried to instill in her. What was that for if not to set-up her actions in the ensuing situations?? These lack of foresights are awkward ways of stalling the evitable. Shadow of a Doubt could have been Hitch's best if not for a graceless ending that insulted ones intelligence. Some cool kills, slick production values, a bad screenplay, lackluster direction, a boring score, bland villains and a Jessica Chastain wannabe in the lead adds up to only 5 stars. A moderate timewaster. In full agreement with IMDb consensus and completely befuddled by Rotten Tomatoes' 80 rating.

Dumb and predictable but I've seen worse. Definitely a low budget project with less than stellar acting, but something if you're looking for a mindless movie that you can passively watch and know the ending before it starts, then this is the one.

This movie of course only works because people make bad decisions along the way (ie. Give the hero the plot and not kill them when they have the chance to etc)...and also because apparently military grade zip ties do not work on regular civilians as they escape their ties at least 4 to 5 times. Overall it's bad but strangely watchable. PS. Did I already say how bad the acting is, especially from the supporting cast?

I didn't have high hopes for this one, but... How many reviews have you read that start that way? Anyway, the pacing of this movie was glacial. Even fastforwarding through some of the real slow parts made this movie feel about twice as long as it needed to be. They also through in almost every trope and cliche for this sub-genre (unexpected female warrior). I think if the bad guys weren't so inept, it would have been more palatable. Also so many of the "twists" were forced into the script that it was like watching a Rube Goldberg device were someone needs to nudge each new prop to get it to work.