Browncoats: Redemption

Browncoasts: Redemption had a great idea behind it - to follow another crew in the Firefly 'verse years after the events of Serenity. Kind of like Firefly: the Next Generation.

Unfortunately, even for a fan film, this movie left much to be desired. As a fan film, one can forgive that the cinematography, audio, editing, and to some degree the acting fell short. The big nail in this movie's coffin was the script.

Creating a movie like this with nothing but volunteers and fan effort is a HUGE undertaking, and I'm sure an ungodly amount of time, effort, and love went into this. However, that makes me question even more what in the sweet hell the creators were thinking when they decided to put all of this effort into making a movie out of this horrible, horrible script. Most of the movie is spent in exposition; we get far, far more information than we needed about the characters and many other aspects of the story. Worse yet, most of that exposition is delivered by people telling stories sitting around at a table or in a hanger. SHOW US, DON'T TELL US!

I love the Browncoats fan group. They are fantastic and generous people, and I hate to make anyone feel bad. I just wish that the story they chose to tell had been selected and edited a bit more carefully.

And because I understand how difficult it is to assemble a movie from a disparate collection of Film Clips, Music, SoundFX and Special Effects. Not to mention Costumes, lighting etc. And because I really don't like rating TV Shows and Films lower than 10, in all honesty, I could not give this a 10. But I give it a 5 for just trying.

I like that this film shows another group of Space Truckers from the Firefly Universe, and stuff that happens after "Miranda" was uncovered - But it is still a Fan Film. So far the best Fan Film to date has been the fantastic "Of Gods and Men" for the Star Trek Universe. But that film had one advantage over this one: It was conceived and directed by Tim "Tuvok" Russ, and it afforded an opportunity for Trek actors and actresses to one again stand on the Bridge of Enterprises from Various Mirrors Universes.

This film does not lack in Costumes, whoever did this did a swell job if recreating the Starship Troopers Armor that was used in Firefly. This is another thing that the makers of this had no access to: Huge warehouses of Props from Universal/20th Century Fox/Paramount/etc. So they had to do with what they could scrounge up. Also, a regular show has a stable of Actors they can draw from. Now, the actors used for this, did as well as they could, but it was still wooden. The Sound Editing was not done well, so things like Dialogue is not very effective.

I could have lived with all of this, but one thing really stood out: In Firefly the series and the Movie Sequel "Serenity", you would have noticed if you are a fan, that when Kaylee talks about Engine parts, she never uses direct terms related to any Electronic or Engineering tech that exists today. Joss made sure that all of the names of parts did not come from a Radio Shack Catalog. So, in this, there is one scene where the non-Wash pilot activates some kind of Voice Recognition for the ship, and in response the Ship says something about it's "Diodes". That word was never used in Firefly, ever, nor the name of any other electronic component.

Now, I watched various parts of this, cos it was painful to watch it in sittings of longer than 5 minutes each time. With better Directing and Acting skills, the semi-passable lines could have been delivered believably. But the writer created an opening scene which had crew of this ship in a bar, and eventually a fight breaks out, like it used to happen all the time in Firefly. I just didn't buy it, it's not logical that another crew of another ship would act just like the crew of Firefly, even if they were Brown-coats. So I flipped forward, and I did not see any other interesting scenes

So, maybe I'll go back and watch it from start to finish, as much as I love Firefly, the things which endeared that show to me did not exist here. If I view it again and find differently, I'll amend this review and change the rating.

This movie was... interesting. For all non-Firefly fans out there, let me define "interesting"; Oh God, oh God, we're all going to die... This feeling of going to die does not come from the intense action, nor the amazing acting... it's just this general feeling of wanting to curl up in a dark hole...

That's not to say I don't applaud the Browncoats. It was a well intentioned movie that was poorly executed. The writing tried too hard to BE Firefly, which was probably the worst mistake they could have made - there were no unique characters and much of the slang is forced. Also, the audio was terrible at best most of the time...

I understand that this is a fan film and that it shouldn't be expected to blow us away, but I was honestly embarrassed and nauseous from this movie.

I give them a 10 for effort, but a -4 for execution...

First off I'd like to applaud the cast and crews effort in making this film and congratulate them on all the money they raised for charity.

However that being said, i can't help but feel that BR lacked subtlety, the acting was commendable for a low budget production but had no pace. I suspect this is due to the editing. When i viewed the credits only one person was listed to have edited the film, i can't help but feel that with more hands on deck and a little bit more attention to detail this film could have been a solid 8.

The use of camera angles were minimal, too many wide shots used in intense moments took me right out of the scene, the choreography was tight but the editing was loose.

Subtleties like background sound were missing,Which made conversations seem awkward and staged. Combine this with "extras" on set glancing at the camera and lack of properly scouted locations brought this down to a 5.

In conclusion i feel that had BR had a slightly larger budget and editing team this film could have gone down as a solid browncoats victory, however it crawled along and found no one to carry it...

Alas browncoats your redemption is not yet at hand!

This was a clever story set in the 'verse that many of us Browncoats have come to know and love. While the movie had plot and technical flaws, it wasn't cheesy or unwatchable. And believe me when I say I can't watch bad acting. The script was written so as not to stretch the volunteer actors too far. And when they did get hammy the director was clever enough to have them refer to their bad scene as their character acting out of character. So the bad acting is made to work.

One of the problems with a fan movie like this is that the fans want to revel in the atmosphere of the source material. Where the original film, Serenity, and TV series, Firefly, only occasionally highlighted the culture, like companions and crew-as-family scenes, this movie is awash in both. There are companions everywhere and every scene with the crew is some kind of bonding or family support. This is what the fans loved about the series and in this film they overdo it.

The directing was effective. Almost every scene was done with a framed wide shot. A couple of lines needed close-ups so we could see the actor's expression to make the shot work. But every scene was in focus and the pacing was good. And a couple of scenes were downright high quality. The voice-over scene where the captain explains her motivations was excellent, for example.

The casting was excellent. The actors all appear to be cut from the same cloth as the characters they portray. The only mistake was casting the captain as a female tough guy. It just doesn't work. It's the same mistake they made in Cutthroat Island with Geena Davis. Without being too crude let's just say no one thinks that Heide Montag would be great in a street fight because of her overly developed upper body. We're asked to believe that here. (Just to be clear, there's no indication of plastic surgery on any of the cast.)

The special effects were well done. The pacing was good. The acting was acceptable, especially for volunteers. The story was an interesting addition to the Firefly 'verse. All in all a good and commendable effort. And especially worthwhile as a means to donate to some excellent charities.