Out of Exile

This is a very well-made film. (solid acting, directing and story) I was pleasantly surprised by this film. Good storyline about bank robbers in TX. The movie did an excellent job of keeping consistent pace and the acting was pretty good. Also, I appreciated the fact that it had more character development and was a slow burn that did not feel slow. Directing and story-line well-made, and the twists and turns in the movie were effective and with purpose. I would actually recommend watching this one if you like a good thriller that has a nice storyline to it. Excellent work here and would like to see more like these.

This film is your generic bank robbery thriller but it does add a little flavor itself with a plot of about a man finding a way to redeem himself for his past transgressions while also trying to find a way to escape his criminal lifestyle before it is too late. This kinda of plot is a little different compared most bank robbery films as they are usually about guys trying to make it rich while escaping the law. This film does it differently as Gabe is trying get out of his previous bad deeds but also move on with his life and start a new one with his estranged daughter. Now I did enjoy the performances by Adam Hampton and Ryan Merriman both, I liked the story that Gabe had in this film as he is broken man that has paid for his mistakes by serving prison but due to not knowing life outside of crime, he goes right back into it. It is only when his brother botches the bank job and kills an armored bank guard does he see the errors of his ways. This story of Gabe is really a story of redemption and rebirth. As he tries to redeem himself from his sins by trying to fix all of the issues that he caused plus he plans to get himself a rebirth by starting a whole new life without crime involved. Now Adam's performance is very strong in this film and you can tell that he truly embraced the character that he is acting as. Which I very well enjoyed. Now Ryan Merriman may have just had the best performance of his career in this film. As Merriman usually is an actor who casted in very small time b Rated films or horror movies and isn't really take serious as a A-listed actor. But his performance in this movie was quite impressive as he plays an intimidating and cunning FBI agent very well. In fact as audience member I was blown away with how convincing his performance was as he looked intimidating onscreen which is incredible to say given Merriman's previous work. But hopefully this film may open the door for Ryan Merriman to have more serious and A-graded roles in the future. Now the one problem that I had with the movie was its ending as I felt it was a little too dark and depressing especially after the redemption arc that the story takes you on plus the ending is one of the those open ended cliffhangers that make you have to have own interpretation. I don't mind open ended films if they are necessary, I just didn't think that this film needed an open ended ending and should have had a more grounded and solid structured ending instead. But that is just my critique and opinion on the film. Overall though I had a decent fun time with this film and I could definitely see myself watching it again.

Out of Exile is garbage. It immediately reeks of streaming-level quality. I thought about quitting 15 minutes in. I should have. Every aspect of this movie is bad.

The acting (and overacting) are the easiest giveaway. The story seems like it was written by artificial intelligence, copying parts of other movies of the genre. The "action" scenes are useless. The only good thing I can think of is it was able to get me invested in the lead character and his relationship with his daughter. Otherwise, it's pretty much a waste of time.

Streaming services are ruining my love for movies. I would guess somewhere around 90% are terrible, 9% are mediocre, and 1% are actually good. I think going forward I will only watch theatrical movies unless I hear multiple recommendations for a streaming movie. (1 viewing, 3/26/2023)

I rented this on release. Overall the film is trite. I found myself losing interest several times because it tended to drag in spots. I feel it could have been cut down shorter. The Protagonist Gabriel comes across as an aloof delivering an incredibly underwhelming performance. This could be perhaps the Actor seemingly more befitting as a Character Actor than a leading man. The brother Wes was a hot headed Veteran with ptsd. As a Veteran myself this was ridiculous. Stereotypes surrounding mental illness such as ptsd and the way this was portrayed was one dimensional and stereotypical of the "Dangerous" unhinged Veteran. The Character lacked depth and I found myself watching an Actor attempting to act mental illness and pop pills. His physicality came across more like someone on Cocaine then living with the challenges of ptsd. I didn't believe it. The Antagonist played by Peter Greene as Whitman Rader kept this film afloat. His Character came across gritty and believable. I found myself wanting to see him more as his Character was interesting. Had it not been for him I would have turned it off. Overall the film is nothing new. The plot, the heist story we've been fed many times before. However, if you are going to give it to me make it worth my investment of $6.99. If you're bored and can find nothing else to watch then add this to your list of disposable forgettable content being put out. Out of Exile gets 1 Star. I debated giving it 2, but just couldn't get over the stupid unbelievable Character Wes.

Clearly this was a low budget B film, and I can accept that, but I've never seen a film take such a fall in the final act as this film did. It actually had a decent score for a B film, and the cinematography was good. Writer and director Kyle Kauwika Harris did a fairly decent job directing, but failed to direct his cast properly, as most barely looked awake or wanting to be in the film, specifically Adam Hampton, who's acting was the worst, and was the most unconvincing character of them all. Not sure why he was cast as the lead.

This film needed lots of editing and cutting down, because there just wasn't enough meaty narrative to effectively fill in the 107 min runtime, and the snail speed pacing made it feel much longer. Although this story had nothing new to offer that hasn't been done many times before, and much better, at least the first two acts had a cohesive narrative, albeit cliched with the many unnecessary and mostly time-wasting sub plots and familiar genre tropes.

But Kauwika's third act unraveled so bad with tons of plot holes, and became convoluted so bad, it created more questions than answers. It tried to be smart, but failed. It's like Kauwika threw everything and the kitchen sink into the final act, hoping something would stick, and got too lazy to wrap up the viewers impatient investment of the first two acts, into a cohesive resolution. So much didn't make any sense in that third act. Had Kauwika wrapped up the narrative without the easily avoidable plot holes, I could've easily given this a 6 or a 7/10. But investing my time only to end up with an unsatisfied ending with more questions than answers, was annoying. Don't waste your time with this like I did.