The Ritual Killer

Where to begin? The dialog sounds like it was written by someone who is trying to figure out how humans speak. The physical actions - the hand gestures, facial expressions, the movements in general are off - real people don't move, gesture, look, behave like this.

It's almost like writers and director were trying to recreate Bill Shatner's stilted speaking style - overly long pregnant pauses leading into still-born "revelations" (and I use that word loosely). Or maybe they were just trying to pad a 45 minute concept out to an 80 minute movie. The cinematography is weak. Sequences are poorly framed.

There may have been a nugget of a story at the heart of this mess, but this movie doesn't know how to tell that story in an interesting manner.

It's leaden, overly long and boring. I bailed after about 35 minutes and the only reason I didn't bail sooner was that I was making my lunch.

Right from the start, I realized this film would be a flop due to the frustratingly amateur-hour directing by George Gallo. The constant back and forth location transitions from Europe to America were poorly executed and edited, and almost every scene screamed inexperienced directing. Gallo also failed miserably to direct his cast effectively, that is seemed like this was Cole Hauser's first ever acting job. His entire tone, demeanor and dialogue was too monotonic. Sure, part blame goes to the actor, but it's the directors job to know when an actor needs to act better or in a certain way. Only seasoned actors like Freeman rarely need cast direction, as he was the only one that was somewhat convincing in his character. Everyone else seemed inconvenienced to be on set.

The next huge disappointment was how three writers couldn't get a fairly decent premise, executed properly. Aside from the writing being cliched and having elements from pretty much every film in this genre with little to no originality, it was the ridiculous ending that the three writers, Bob Bowersox, Francesco Cinquemani and Luca Giliberto gave their viewers. It was by far the laziest, asinine, and idiotic ending I've ever seen. A fifth grade drama class could've done better.

Almost every element of this film - except the score, which was surprisingly fitting, should be examined in film schools on what not to do. It's a generous 3/10 from me, mostly as pity that Freeman has to live with this mess on his resume.

In the past serial killer - thriller movies there has always been some sort of tension or high drama to keep the movie flowing and interesting. Not in this one. Morgan mostly has bit parts here and there and is basically guest starring in this role for hype only.

His history of good performances is used to bolster this film but there just isn't enough action in this to carry much water. A few chase scenes and that's about it.

A decent story and good opening, but fizzles out rather quickly and all the actors are just going through the motions. Predictable and straightforward and not much really to write about. Could have been a lot worse, but held my interest for a while. No twists, no turns, just a basic a-b-c cop vs killer movie. 3/10, no more than that.

Wow, where to start?

This is bad.

1. Writing-The dialogue is stilted, monotonic, and only serves the purpose to provide exposition to the user. Very few of the writing seems natural or what two people in a conversation would say. In many scenes, it consists of two sentences and then move on to next scene.

2. Editing-The movie jumps from scene to scene without the cohesion between them. They are at a crime scene, at a bar, in Italy, at a university, in New Orleans etc , without explaining how or why they got there. The way the Cole Hauser's character and Morgan Freeman meet is not really explained, just thrown together.

3. Acting-Outside of Freeman, no one seems to have any emotions or facial expressions that matches the scene. Everyone has this 'serious' look regardless of the context.

4. Ending-Seems tacked on. Feels like they were running out of money and said, 'let's finish the finale in next two days'. It was rushed, again no cohesion with the final scene being so illogical or stupid that you want to throw something at the TV.

In short, this is a hard pass.

I was hoping for another Se7en like movie, my favorite genre, but man was I wrong... What has come over these three actors to make this crap? Cole Hauser, Morgan Freeman and Peter Stormare? Are they helping out the director or something? Did they enter this out of pity?

7 minutes in and I was thinking "oh boy, this is going to be bad"... It's the vibe it sends from the beginning. The first actors were so bad, but so bad (bedroom scene) I got irritated from the start.

Awful color grading, dull lighting, terrible pace and really bad acting from all of the cast. This director was able to turn good actors into something cringe to watch.

I hate being mean, but this doesn't deserve any better. I don't know if I'll be watching the whole movie, unless I'm multi-tasking. Like I'm doing now.