Legend of the Bog

STAR RATING: ***** Saturday Night **** Friday Night *** Friday Morning ** Sunday Night * Monday Morning

There seems to be a Breach of the Trade Descriptions Act going on with a lot of these straight to video action films, where the cover gives the wrong impression of what sort of movie it's going to be and even puts a lead star on the front cover that doesn't actually have that much screen time. Vinnie Jones does end up getting a bit more coverage than it first looks like he will, but he's still missing for quite a bit of it and certainly doesn't feel like the main player in it all. And while it looks from the cover like another one of his straight to DVD action films, it's actually more of a messy, jumbled horror/comedy sort of film that goes to both extremes with each genre.

Actually, this is Jones's second collaboration with, and the second feature film of director Brendan Foley, following his equally disastrous debut The Riddle, where Jones was also the lead. But here everything's really lumpen, with truly cheap looking production values, an incomprehensible, incoherent plot and Jones doing his usual silent, grumpy hard man act with some really flat dialogue to chew off. All this and a big, ogre some killer going around bumping everyone off.

I'm really not sure what anyone was trying to get at with this one. Jones should try and get back in theatres and Foley should think about packing it in. *

This film's main contribution must be that it constitutes irrefutable evidence against creationist notions of an intelligent designer of mankind. A truly intelligent designer would not just have provided us with eyelids to avoid watching this kind of rubbish, he would have given us earlids as well to protect our brains against the utterly inane and imbecille dialogue. Fortunately, we have legs, so at least one can walk away from what must be one of the worst movies ever made. It has NO redeeming features. It is not even bad in such a way as to be amusing or entertaining. It is just plain BAD. Inane, idiotic, imbecille, illogical, inconsistent...

No...seriously...this is just plain boring. I have a fondness for watching Vinnie Jones in just about anything which seems to be both a blessing and a curse. He was great in Snatch, hilarious in Eurotrip, and awesome in Midnight Meat Train (despite having only one line in the whole movie...that's how cool he is). He may just be one of the most distinctly British actors in the history of cinema...when the dude's on screen you can't help but think "holy crap, that guy is British". But the blandness of Legend of The Bog is just plain inexcusable, Jones or not.

This movie doesn't really seem to know where it wants to go from the start. Is it a zombie movie? Kind of, but not really. There's people rising from the dead, but they're not zombies in the typical sense. There's pretty much nothing in the way of explanation. You're just meant to accept that 2,000 year old bog bodies are rising from their graves (or lack thereof) looking surprisingly alive and free from decomposition. Period. To be perfectly honest, this movie reminded me (often painfully) of that old episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000 where they showed "Eegah". It's so similar in parts that it seriously makes me question the future of just about anyone appearing this movie. As I watched this movie I was fighting sleep from about 30 minutes in and briefly succumbed right near the end, nodding off momentarily. That's how boring it is...in a HORROR MOVIE, during the CLIMAX, when everything's supposed to go all to hell and be the most entertaining, I briefly nodded off. I didn't miss anything important, though at that point I wouldn't have cared if I had. Oh...and no violence? Seriously? All of the kills are done off screen which is just a huge party foul for a horror movie. Whatever...I think even writing this is giving this film more than it deserves. Skip it and watch something...anything...else.

Sweet LORD this is without a shadow of a doubt one of the WORST films, let alone horror films I have ever seen, the cheapness of the budget shows more in the acting talent than anything else, with the exception of Vinnie Jones who puts in his usual performance as...well...Vinnie Jones. You would have thought he'd have developed some acting talent useful enough to broaden his range since LOCK STOCK but apparently not, he just grunts and mockneys his way through this heap like every other film unfortunate enough to be tainted by his embarrassingly unconvincing efforts at character realism. Also this film a lot of the time, especially for the first half doesn't appear to be sure to-be-sure whether or not it's a horror or an infomercial made for the travel and tourism board of Oireland, a lot of it seems to be jolly-begorrah panning shots of rural country or people going about their mundane business to the chirpy sound of Gaelic folk. The only saving grace to this joke is the on-the-floor-in-hysterics performance put in by whatever lunk they hired to play the bog man. He comes across like a supermarket trolley attendant lost in the woods on cheap speed, his facial expressions as he attempts to convey whatever the director told him to convey are priceless in their utter retardation, look out for a good bit at the end where the girl is squaring up to him, and for a minute he looks like he's building up to a really HUGE roar of fury, neck straining and everything, and then just suddenly looks confused, or constipated, a little embarrassed too. I'm totally in respect of the constraints in place once you've spunked most of your budget on hiring someone with some international kudos but no acting talent whatsoever to play one of your leads, but the least you can do is put SOME effort into redistributing the rest to good effect.

OK, to start with ,don't be baffled by Vinnie being in this movie cause the plot is so thin that u wouldn't even know is there.The acting is bellow par and besides this the actors look like they wanna get the hell outta there and take a break. How should i say it ?......if u survive the first minutes of the film ,which for a movie start are horrible, then u would waste 90 minutes of your life. This movie makes Far Cry look like an Oscar nominee , so no don't watch even if is free. The only guy who made me laugh is the one who plays the so called mummy who looks like acting for him is running , slashing , tearing everything apart and trying to look as dumb as ever. Too bad Vinnie is in the movie , i was expecting a lot more from both.