Backtrace

I am not in the entertainment industry, so I don't know how people like Stallone and even Modine would accept to play in something that is obviously crap. People used to respect these guys! I mean, think about the early Stallone stuff and know this is way worse than that. It's a beyond low budget production, only meant to get more money that they put in by dangling the cast in front of people. This is not a movie so bad it is funny, this is not a movie that someone tried to make interesting and failed, this is clearly a scam. It's criminal and every person watching is a victim. It doesn't have a story! I mean it. There is an old amnesiac guy (Modine) to whom some people give an experimental drug to in order to remember where he hid some money. Stallone appears at the beginning and at the end. Nothing happens. Nothing! There are some really bad scenes where people shoot at each other and then the film ends. The editing, the acting, the filming, everything is just bad! You've been warned.

Pretty generic plot with no real surprises, nothing we haven't seen many times before and even though the runtime is pretty short, less than 1h30m, nothing very interesting or engaging is really happening most of the time. The bulk of the interesting action happens in the first 10 minutes and then the last 10 minutes the rest simply felt like a padding. I am surprised Stallone chose to appear in this.

So at the store last week and along with getting Avengers Endgame on Blu Ray I noticed a pretty new action/thriller with Sylvester Stallone and Matthew Modine called Backtrace. But you know something is wrong when the film is less than a year old and the Blu Ray is already in the bargain bin. The film is just a very boring mess that run 82 minutes (without credits) and still could have been at least 20 minutes shorter.

The plot has a thief (Matthew Modine) and a few other criminals getting shot down by their partners. Modine survives but looses his memory. Seven years later 3 people break him out of a high security facility and put experimental drugs in him. Most of the film is watching Modine have painful flashbacks and looking for bags of money. We get some scenes of Stallone in random cop exposition scenes. But most of the film is just boring scenes of them looking for bags of money. Very little happens in the film. There is two shootout scenes but nothing that exciting. The whole film lacks in every department especially in character development. This is Stallones worst work.

I get that amateur writers need to start somewhere, but writer Mike Maples needed to partner up with a seasoned screenwriter for his 2nd-ever film - especially when casting big names, instead of putting Stallone and Modine thru this garbage. The premise of this story did have a chance, but the writing killed it, and very disappointingly so, to say the least.

Some scenes where outrageously ridiculous and riddled with plot issues. Even some of the dialogue seemed to be written by a 5th grader. I feel bad for Stallone and Modine, I hope they got paid well, as this will not show well on their resumes.

Then there was that constant overbearing and out of place annoying score... who agreed to that? Had the score been more appropriate (and not so loud and more absent), the film would have showed much better.

The directing was also nothing to write home about; the camera work was OK in most of the film, but the shaky migraines and some pan shots and zooms were annoying, but I guess director Brian Miller could only do so much with the screenplay he was handed. I also feel he could've directed his cast better, and edited/cut many of the flaws this film had.

A very generous 6/10 from me, mainly for the story's premise, and because Stallone and Modine carried this film from being a total flop.

The only reason I went to see this is cause I love stallone and I watch every movie he does so I went to see this despite that I knew it's going to be poor from what I heard so far. this time those reviews were right. the movie was not good but it was not crap either. it was just a C- below average flick which will be forgotten soon. problem was the flawed scenario mostly and the acting was not the best either but also we saw that stuff like a million times already. this movie could be passable like 40 years ago. not now. Even stallone if u exclude last like 10 minutes had not been in the movie for more than like.....another 10 minutes. he had a supporting role. not the lead role. Anyways.....if by any chance u wanna check this out I recommend strongly only to rent this movie once or to watch it on tv anyhow. don't waste your time watching this flick in a theater even if u love stallone as stallone don't appear much in the film anyways. it's a C - from me and that cause of stallone mostly.