Deadland

As my summary states, the beginning of this film creates a lot of expectation. OK, I am a fan of nuclear holocausts and post-apocalypse (or, well, used to be, since the latest releases -the book of eli, the road, deadland...- have been quite disappointing). This said, a quarter of an hour into the movie I found myself looking through the window instead of at the screen. The search of the man's woman becomes tedious, slow, boring and lacking action or direction. I like the Asian looking character who befriends him, although his weird attitude doesn't really save the film. Then I decided to watch it at double or triple the speed since I had a bad feeling of wasting my time. I set the speed back to normal towards the end, however the "climax" was nothing of sorts and the overall feeling when the end credits started to roll was that of what have I done with my life for the past hour. Considerable attempt that stayed in failure.

There's nothing worse than a B movie that pretends to be something more than it is, complete with misleading cover art on the DVD sleeve. A post apocalyptic tale can be action or drama or a combination of both. But when a film has such tight budget restraints that it only consists of bland soap opera style dialogue by seriously lame actors, it better at least have a decent script. Here we have a bunch of awful actors doing what can only be described as bad screen tests in the woods of Georgia for a painfully long 95 minutes. No action, no suspense, no direction, no nothing! What a rip off! How do these direct to video pieces of crap ever get made? The worst part of all is that these so-called actors have the nerve to do a Making Of featurette that tells of how hard they worked on their fine production. These egocentric losers are delusional! At least if they had some shootouts or some redeeming violence or exploitive rape sex scenes or a horde of brain eating zombies or anything cool I might have been able to say something positive about this horribly dull movie. I used to enjoy buying cheap DVDs from the bargain bin and having a good laugh...This movie has permanently killed the fun in that forever. From now on I will research DVDs to ensure they have something worth watching. Life is too short to waste on this SHITE!!! Thank you for allowing me to vent, IMDb. And to Billy Weeks and your gang of dud actor friends... Get new careers... YOU ALL SUCK SEVERELY as actors or writers or producers or directors!!!

The relatively low rating (4.5, as of my review) led me to lower my expectations on this low budget, independent movie. I thought it could do with a little more editing and a tighter script, maybe with a bigger payoff at the end. After watching for nearly two hours, the subdued climax wasn't very filling.

Anyways, the meat of the movie concerns a muscle guy looking for his estranged wife, who left him just before World War III broke out. Strangely enough, the muscle guy is supposed to be cubicle worker, I think, and he never really does much hand-to-hand fighting. That leaves me wondering exactly how to classify this movie. I was expecting a scifi/martial arts/adventure movie, like JCVD's Cyborg or Universal Soldier, but this seems to have some pretensions toward being a scifi drama. Unfortunately, the story never really goes anywhere very exciting or interesting, though it kept my attention. If there had been more fight scenes and better stunt work, it would have been a good, poor man's JCVD movie. With a more intelligent script and better direction, it could have been a good, poor man's John Carpenter movie. In the end, we're left with what it is -- entertaining, yet not quite fulfilling. I was admittedly a bit generous in giving it a 7/10, but I think it was good attempt, even if it doesn't quite live up to the potential.

Alright so while it is lacking in some things we've grown accustomed to in a story as expansive as Post-apacolyptic worlds, ie., BIG CGI, extravagant fight scenes, etc., I do think they had a pretty decent story going, if not the budget. I thought the acting was pretty good for the most part. Probably most impressive was the cinematography, some beautifully panned scenes. I would definitely agree with one of the other reviewers and say this is more of a sci-fi drama than action flic. A lot of the scenes were meant to take you into a post apacolyptic world full of despair and angst, this however feels a bit staged since many of the people interacting in the film are in good shape, clean/new clothes, etc. All in all, not a terrible movie for a rainy day and some popcorn on your couch.

This film appears to use professional camera equipment, but that's where the similarities to a real movie end. I picked this up at the video store because the cover showed a post apocalyptic background and described itself as such. You expect Mad Max even if it's just a poor low budget version. The reality when you watch it is that it is a bunch of guys in camouflage fatigues running around in the woods. The plot is goofy and overly moral-agenda ridden, the dialogue consists of things nobody would say, and the actors' experience couldn't consist of more than a few commercials or a late night soft-core porn. This movie would remind me of a soft-core porn (in which the plot is superfluous) except that is cleans up everything but the implied violence, which the camera mostly cuts away.