Street

This movie was just awful. I give it 3 stars for actors who are at least better than a high school actor trying to pad a college application with extra activities. But the rest of it... I don't even know where to begin.

The script is basic. Just simple, non imaginative, cliché. The directing is the same. I will leave those elements alone, because you can almost enjoy those aspects in bad, low budget movies when you are going in to them knowing it was a bad low budget movie.

The star of the movie, the fighting, was OK at best. For such an obviously low budget movie that brought in some MMA names, they should have really done much more to make sure the fighting was way better. And maybe they did...maybe it was just lost in the editing. But none of the fights had any sort of drama. No build. No gripping action.

But the thing that KILLS this move...the bad technical aspects. The utter lack of proper post production. I hate seeing seams in the walls of cheap sets. It is a sure fire give away that you are dealing with low budget. The lighting had no character to it. Did anyone do any color correction? It looked like raw footage. And the sound mix was the absolute killer here. It really played like a temp cut that they rolled out because they just gave up. No attempt at SFX through most of the edit, other scenes just had a background SFX track playing on a loop, music cues dropping out all of a sudden, popping in hot in other places, playing loud under dialogue in other spots so you couldn't hear a thing. If the producers don't have respect enough for their film to finish it properly then nobody should but the time into watching this. Unless you are making a low budget film and want to see a good example of why post production can help a bad movie out, then watch this as a cautionary tale. It will convince you to find more money for post for sure.

Whew, this was a tough one to sit through. I'm good friends with a member of the cast (who will remain nameless in this review) I was curious why he didn't hound me to check out his latest film. Normally, I get overwhelmed with requests from him to watch his work, now I see why. I'll try to keep this as professional as possible but I have to be honest like I always am. Lets start with the cast, my friend withstanding, this cast was just flat out awful. The lead Beau Smart carrying the lead of a film is about as far fetched as me playing CF for my beloved Dodgers next season, sounds great in fantasy land but in reality it would be an epic fail. In spite of his clear shortcomings as an actor, much less a lead, the supporting cast is almost as bad. Even my friend, who is definitely a strong actor, falls a bit short on bringing his character to life. This tells me one thing, the director let down the cast. Now, I believe the director was clearly in over his head, but giving him all the blame would be like a NFL team firing their head coach after a 2-14 season. The players still have to play and this cast just wasn't up for the challenge and/or simply aren't skilled enough. Enough on the cast and the director, nothing really redeeming on those fronts.

The story? Well, my first response would be "what story?." A film like this isn't really designed to captivate an audience through story telling, I get that, but at least make an effort. The martial arts aspect is clearly the star of this film, but it's not strong enough to carry the film throughout. The story becomes very predictable, almost hokey which it was not intended to be at all. The very underwhelming, and at times embarrassingly bad, cast doesn't help infuse anything that would be even loosely considered interesting. What is most frustrating about this film is that they obviously stole story lines from other films, which is fine because it's really a common practice nowadays in cinema. The difference is that when most films do this, they enhance the story they are ripping off, Street actually lifted these story lines and went the other way by watering them down, like watching the cinematic version of skim milk.

Technically the film was fine, considering its a low budget project. There were a few issues, mainly lighting and a few focus pulls, but nothing that compares to the misfortune that was the unfortunate combination of acting, directing and writing. This marks the lowest rating of any film that I have ever reviewed. I love indie films and the filmmakers that put so much into bringing their work to life, but this project just failed miserably on all the key aspects.

The headline says it all. I watched this title on Netflix and it was terrible. at many points I said wow this acting is on par with a High School drama club putting their first play together, or wow their are extras that means people were worse than our leads. a terrible scrip that was basically a bad mix between rocky and fighter ( a decent channing tatum flic) with laughable dialog. porn quality acting between the love interests (like the director had to have stolen them from an adult DVD) and fight scenes that had sound editing that the average you tuber could do better, it may have been low budget but it was also low effort which is why the movie was bad. But its like a car wreck, terrible but you can't stop watching. however the WOW as you keep watching is that it gets worse.

I was very excited to see that there is finally a new MMA movie out and that it is a respectable movie. I knew going in that this was not a high budget movie and quite honestly I was being a bit of a pessimist which probably worked in the movie's favor. I expected bad writing, bad acting, cheesy fights and a plot as invisible as Wonder Woman's plane. I am not comparing this movie to Here Comes the Boom, I am comparing it realistically as a small budget film and I have to say that when I first saw Beau Casper Smart in the opening scenes in his apartment with the corn rows, I was not too sure I was going to like the protagonist so I was already thinking the worst but to my surprise the movie, Smart and the other characters started to grow on me and though it does not end with Rocky style heroics and a 7 - 12 minute long music infused fight scene, it is much more of what you typically expect from MMA fights that last 3 rounds. A bit more realistic if you ask me. Most fights in real life do not last nearly as long as Hollywood portrays. A lot less like volcano eruptions and a lot more like earthquakes. I have to say that when the movie was over it made the cut and now sits on my DVD shelf in the fight movie section right beside Here Comes the Boom and Blood Sport. I will admit that there were a couple of cheesy scenes where Smart falls in love with the lady lead and the first workout sequence building up to the big fight; music was like something you would see in a faith based film but what the film did was tell a story from start to finish that actually made sense. I wish that they would have shown the female lead, Kate Minor, up to down a little more. She has some sexy legs. Only one scene shows them.

The movie and storyline itself was enjoyable but the editing of the film is what ruined its potential to be great.