Duels

Having seen the trailer, I gave this film a shot. In the beginning, I wasn't disappointed. The first few scenes were quite good, obviously imitating the cool atmosphere of films by Tarantino and Rodriguez. This lasted only for the first 10 minutes though.

The rest of the film dragged on to include family drama, ridiculous array of stand-offs and completely illogical character decisions. The actors could have probably managed a more believable performance, since the cast was decent, but they had nothing to work with. The initially cool and skilled outlaws break down into randomly psychotic, calm, honourable, greedy, sadistic or thoughtful, at the drop of a hat, from one scene to another.

I cannot recommend this film. It is a forgettable mess, which after the first few scenes, didn't even seem to try to be anything else.

This is the worst film I have seen this year.

The plot makes no sense whatsoever. The characters are stupid - I mean really stupid - and the script is somewhere between rubbish and turgid.

The director clearly wanted to make a Tarantino style western/gangster movie but could not direct or write a script get anywhere near this.

One of those films where you realise half an hour in that you have another hour of this to go but you might as well as you are already in it..and then an hour later you realise you made a bad decision an hour earlier.

I have to write more apparently to publish my review...so now the film is annoying me more by making me type more about it. This should definitely be near the top of your avoid list.

JCVD is top billed but really not utilitied in this rather disappointing film. The premise was okay, but the story had to force its way through a slightly unexplained opening. At no point did you feel gripped or engaged, as the setting and characters were uninspired. JCVD, who I imagine is the sole draw to this film for most people, played his part well, but really had no opportunity to make an impact on the overall quality.

The good: The cinematography is really nice (except for a view hiccups).

The bad: Jean-Claude Van Damme does not so bad as usual (isn't much in the movie)

The ugly: Characters and story The whole movie doesn't make any sense - not even a little bit. I don't wanna spoil for the brave that sit trough the movie - but its bad, really bad.

In this movie you will see characters (yes I mean plural) that have no soul, are cliché, unbelievable and really stupid.

And if I say stupid I really mean it - almost nobody of the main characters would live that long if they where like this forever (but the movie didn't mention a chemical plant accident where everybody got insane - so ...)

For me it's always surprising to see that really bad scipts are getting money (and we talk about millions) - where clearly no money can't be made. OK yes Tarantino or Robert Rodriguez could make this film work (but hey they would cast the right actors and give them some crazy lines to work with)

Back in the day, a movie starring Jean-Claude Van Damme was an action flick with lots of martial arts. He was the good guy in it. And it actually starred Van Damme.

More recently, Van Damme has made some movies with him as a flawed protagonist, and then several more as the main bad guy.

This movie is a decent Drama/Suspense film, with Van Damme as a secondary character, and a tries-to-be-good bad guy. He is just above the "character actor" role, probably in my mind only because he is JCVD.

The bad guys here go looking for the guy who barely escaped and still has the money, after some hold-up years ago where everyone else goes to prison to stew and fester about their revenge. There are enough variations on this basic idea to keep the viewer interested. Lennie James does a good job as the town Sheriff, easy going, hard to ruffle, and who you somehow know you just don't want to mess with. There is actually a little action here and there, but it is realistic (no martial arts) and serves mostly to add to the suspense.

With no JCVD, this would be a movie worth a watch. An interesting plot, with good acting, and nice cinematography. Seeing JCVD do his "actual acting" thing is also fairly enjoyable. He manages to entertain with his french (Belgian) accent and a simmering manner that seems to add depth even to a character that has little.