Green Ghost and the Masters of the Stone

It has some funny juvenile humor. It feels like a mashup between a Marvel comic book, Kung Fu martial arts, Mexican comedies films drenched in cheese. My favorite parts were with Danny and the homage to the guy's mother during the end credit. The end credits touched me.

It's never good when the producer of an action movie is also the star- in this case a guy who's 50-something thinking he can play the brother of 20-somethings- but I watched this cuz Danny Trejo. Imagine Big Trouble in Little China but without good actors or a good script. The plot revolves around setting up supernatural fights, which themselves are well done, but there's nothing new or imaginative in this story or its characters. (Is anyone else tired of magic + kungfu movies?)

Needless to say that I hadn't heard about this 2021 movie titled "Green Ghost and the Masters of the Stone" prior to sitting down and watching it here in 2023. I stumbled upon the movie by random chance, and seeing that the movie had Danny Trejo on the cast list, then of course I opted to sit down and watch it.

Writers Charlie Clark, Michael D. Olmos, Brian Douglas and Rafael Antonio Ruiz put together a fair enough script and storyline for the movie. I will say that the movie was watchable, though it wasn't particularly much a movie that appealed much to my liking and preference in entertainment.

The acting performances in "Green Ghost and the Masters of the Stone" were okay, and they had some good actors and actresses on the cast list.

Visually then "Green Ghost and the Masters of the Stone" was actually a nice surprise. The special effects and visuals in the movie were good, and definitely added a layer to the movie and thus helping to make it more watchable.

I am sure that there is an audience out there for a movie such as "Green Ghost and the Masters of the Stone", I just happened to not be a part of that particular target audience. While the movie is listed as an action comedy, I have to say that director Michael D. Olmos failed on the comedy aspect, because it was hardly present throughout the 82 minutes that the movie ran for.

My rating of director Michael D. Olmos's 2021 movie "Green Ghost and the Masters of the Stone" lands on a five out of ten stars.

My friend and I are the only 2 people in the theater which is always a great feeling as we can speak freely (not a slam by the way, this happens to us a lot where we live). We're only watching this because a Texas rule is to consume anything with Danny Trejo in it.

About 10 minutes into the movie, the plot, effects, and acting make us say "Why is this in theaters instead of a free streaming service?" We begin to deconstruct what's happening. As children, the 3 main characters are all the same age, yet as adults, Charlie is 15+ years older so now we've moved on to "Why is this guy the lead?" We start wondering if this is a regular guy who's so rich that he managed to fund a film just so he could see himself on the big screen. We begin Googling... turns out that is in fact the case. A real life, rich car dealership owner is starring in his own film. Wow!

Looking at this movie in a vacuum, it's average at best. The effects are decent enough. The fight choreography is serviceable. The acting is just plain fine. The tough pill to swallow is the storyline. It is remarkably choppy and jumps around with charcter actions not being earned, and the plotholes will take you out of it all completely.

This quickly exposed itself as a passion project by a wealthy guy with a big ego... then we had the rug pulled out from us. The ending credits revealed that irl Charlie was in fact raised by an irl Nana and you are shown a myriad of heart warming pictures of them as they grow older together. It ends up being a really sweet homage to what looks to be an amazing woman by an eternally grateful guy. And I mean, if most of us could give our mother figures the world, we would. The fact this guy actually did it is commendable and you can't fault him for that. I'm sure there's still some ego there (c'mon, guy, you gave yourself first and second billing in the end credits lol) but at the same time, he didn't give himself a 25 year old love interest which is always the case with these. So I don't know, maybe this is 100% sincere. Ultimately, the film resonated with us as a touching Mother's Day gift one week prior to the occasion and made us more appreciative of our own moms who we routinely overlook. And a movie that can do that is a win in my book.

I just finished watching Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. I enjoyed the Green Ghost movie more. Why?

First, the fighting was top notch. I was quite frankly shocked with how good the choreography was. I've seen indie movie kung fu and it looks bad. Real bad. But this was superb.

The acting was decent. Also a lot better than I expected. The only guy I kinda knew was Danny Trejo. But the others were solid too. The lead reminded me of Johnny Lawrence's brother or cousin. I was surprised as I thought he was just comedic relief. But the dude can really fight.

The special effects were adequate...even good for an indie movie.

There was heart in this movie, a strong message about who your family really is, some laugh out loud humor, fantastic fighting and really good directing.

I definitely want to see them do a sequel or a bigger budget version of this film. Will be following the people associated with this for sure. I'd give it a solid 7.5 out of 10. Will be watching again.