Tin Soldier

When I stumbled upon this I didn't even think it was real, but it is! A movie with Jamie Foxx AND Robert DeNiro and not one trailer? Why are they not promoting this? I soon found out...This is one of the silliest things I have ever seen.

There are three main problems. First is the story itself. The narrative choice they made to tell the story in voiceover, flashbacks and then back to present day in a way that makes the timeline really confusing. Did this happen ten years ago or five? When did the character make this decision? How long were they together vs apart? How long did they know where a certain character was? Made it really hard to be invested in the character relationships that we are presented with. Also the cult titles/honorifics- Shinja, Bokushi? Pure lol wtf.

Second is Jamie Foxx as the villain. He's got this crazy wig and beard, straight hamming it up. I just couldn't take him seriously in what's supposed to be a deathly serious role.

The third and biggest problem is Scott Eastwood as the protagonist. I don't know why they keep asking him to carry lead roles. He is textbook nepo baby. He's got the looks and the name but he lacks the presence/gravitas of a leading man. There's an ironic scene close to the end where the villain PERFECTLY describes who Eastwood is in real life: a guy who always comes up short because he just doesn't have the mettle.

What about DeNiro? Well, he's in this for like, five minutes tops. They could have got any old character actor to do what he did, which wasn't much.

One star for Jamie Foxx looking crazy which is the only entertainment value. Real waste of time and talent.

Movie was and is a mess. I and others will better enjoy observing ants in their natural or artificial habit.

Movie needs help, what a mess. Budget probably went to Jamie Foxx's interview scene, 10min worth of work for 1mill.

How are these projects green lit. Lots of CGI, unfortunately not as much in script.

Movie feels like a chose your own adventure of slop.

Flashback scenes give the viewer the urge to flash themselves for greater entertainment, regardless of pro/con of self-flash.

Please use your time by donating energy to help the world and not on this mess of a movie. Pete Sampras would do better as a writer and/or director.

I watched this with a couple people but if alone wouldn't have bothered after 15 minutes. I guess I expected more with the sectors involved and director but wow this is not watchable. It's boring and everyone watching spent most of the time just playing around on their phones. Hollywood writers are nothing but disappointing most of the time these days and actors aren't even trying it seems. They just want a pay check. The plot was an ok premise but poor execution. The character development just didn't make sense and you didn't care about any of them. Hard choices easy life, easy choices hard life. It's not a hard choice not to watch this movie.

Filled with stylistic editing, the barrage of imagery is nauseating, and without any story development just adds to utterly confuse and bore the viewer. This story needed to be told in realtime, without continuous flashbacks and ridiculous slow motions, 360 degree pans, filters and colour corrections. I reminded myself through the whole movie that nobody sets out to make a bad movie since I wanted to like it so much. But unfortunately, a great fundamental premise gets lost without a script and direction. They could have stuck with a Western instead of this mash-up of psychological action romance thriller western whatever whatever. At the very least this is a great movie to illustrate to cinema schools how not to abuse stylistic over editing.

It's not hard to make a bad film. But it's hard to get the money together to involve actors of this level in something like this.

It's possible that viewers might wonder if the financiers were seeking to exchange money of a certain type for money of another variety. I wouldn't want to conjecture about that.

It's not just the spend on the leads either, it doesn't look cheap for the most part. And there's some kind of ham-fisted attempt to deliver a message too. It's not for me to be offended by the take on combat PTSD that's being put before us here, although I can imagine others would be.

It really is awful though.