siderite

At one level you get exactly what you paid for: a movie that justifies your frustrations and their violent sublimation. If Nobody was a movie about a retired muscleman his family knows nothing about, this one involves the entire family in a "great vengeance and furious anger" against a psychotic mobster ruling a small town.

On another level, this film is really sad. What it says is that there are people who are above the law, that own the law, that own you, and that the only way to solve this problem is with violence. Only you couldn't possibly do it, because you're a normal person, unlike the protagonist. I am sure that feudal serfs were telling each other similar stories when they were toiling the fields while their wives were being ravaged by their lord.

One just has to ask: are these movies merely providing the entertainment and sense of righteousness we crave, or are they normalizing the corrupt state of the world, where only the mighty are righty? And if you think I am going all over board with this and my own unsolicited opinions, just take a look at the last scenes of this film and you will see that the action was never the point.

I don't know what I expected. I am not a Mission Impossible fan, I barely remember any of them, but I had the feeling they entertained me in the past. This one? A stream of mindless exposition, bad editing, ridiculous "plans", impossible coincidences, fast switching scenes, meaningless action scenes and still three hours long. It's simply boring.

But it was worse than that. It tried all it could to make us feel nostalgia and connection to the characters. And it failed miserably! Honestly, the only thing that stood out from the film was Hayley Atwell's smile in one scene. The rest was a blur I can't be bothered to commit to memory.

First I was confused. Didn't I see this film? Wasn't it the talk of the town a few years ago? I must have watched it and completely forgot. Then I remembered how it was shelved and only resurfaced now. And for a movie that TV channels can show again and again for cheap, it's not that bad. I mean, I've seen movies as bad as this on TV since I was a child. Same wooden acting, same formulaic scripts, same barbaric editing and the same lack of meaning for anything. Even the same level of special effects.

Filmmakers, do you realize that if you took those SFX and gave them to some dedicated people they might have polished them and made them good for free, just because it hurts so see such a level of miscare?

But I digress. This is what a very lazy ChatGPT would come up with if you'd tell it to take the Red Sonja character, combine it with Spartacus, then make it understandable for 5 year olds. Also make it violent, but PG-13, maybe PG, for good measure. There is no creativity shown in any part of this film. It's completely and utterly bland, a flat spreadsheet of all zeros only an accountant would be pleased with. I think that from the footage they shot, a decent editor could have raised the bar a little bit, but what they had was the bottom of the barrel.

And the story is what one would expect, but with a twist! Instead of the cruel warlord that kills men and rapes women, we get a manipulative weak boy that wants to rule the world with science, against all morals and beliefs. Oh, where have I heard that before? In EVERY movie and series made lately. I understand the zeitgeist villain is a tech bro with too much power and no conscience, but it shouldn't affect the story of a medieval fantasy film!

Bottom line: I was curious to see the Red Sonja actress in a skimpy bathing suit armor, but that was like 3 minutes of the film and not even that memorable. The rest of the film is a complete waste of time.