Avarice

John V. Soto is an Australian indie auteur who likes to genre hop. That is, his productions to date tend to change category from release to release. What they all tend to have in common however are the tell-tales of a low-budget indie namely: the excessive use of strange background music to fill gaps; excessive use of garish lighting (greens, blues) to add excitement to unexciting scenes; wooden scripts; and wooden acting. What makes AVARICE stand out is the very smart idea of a professional archer caught in a DIE HARD situation, and then using her mad skills to overcome the predicament. It's a clever idea, but the cleverness lasts for about 10 minutes, tops, and then we are right back where we started.((Designated "IMDb Top Reviewer." Please check out my list "167+ Nearly-Perfect Movies (with the occasional Anime or TV miniseries) you can/should see again and again (1932 to the present))

The premise was simple enough. A dysfunctional family needs some help to work it all out. A home invasion might be just the trick. Expert archer Mom coming to the rescue could be very cool if not for her forgetting things all along the way. Especially the one thing her Dad tried to instill in her. What was that for if not to set-up her actions in the ensuing situations?? These lack of foresights are awkward ways of stalling the evitable. Shadow of a Doubt could have been Hitch's best if not for a graceless ending that insulted ones intelligence. Some cool kills, slick production values, a bad screenplay, lackluster direction, a boring score, bland villains and a Jessica Chastain wannabe in the lead adds up to only 5 stars. A moderate timewaster. In full agreement with IMDb consensus and completely befuddled by Rotten Tomatoes' 80 rating.

Dumb and predictable but I've seen worse. Definitely a low budget project with less than stellar acting, but something if you're looking for a mindless movie that you can passively watch and know the ending before it starts, then this is the one.

This movie of course only works because people make bad decisions along the way (ie. Give the hero the plot and not kill them when they have the chance to etc)...and also because apparently military grade zip ties do not work on regular civilians as they escape their ties at least 4 to 5 times. Overall it's bad but strangely watchable. PS. Did I already say how bad the acting is, especially from the supporting cast?

I watched this movie with rewind of some boring scenes. The first impression at the end of the film is that I wondered what the point of the story was. We have a man who cheats on a woman with a colleague's wife, then steals from him and at the end of the film he is all righteous and victorious, I mean really, I don't know what you wanted to show with that part of the story. In general, that part of the story about who did what to whom and who cheated whom is very poorly portrayed and shown to be completely unclear. In general, the acting is at an amateur level, the characters are all generic and boringly without personality. The story is potentially good but extremely poorly presented. This is a below average time killer and nothing more!

Just watched this Australian action thriller, and unlike some reviewers comments it was slow, it moved along quite nicely - especially when the tension ramps up after the home invasion. Great unique use of archery throughout. Gillian Alexy brought across her stress believably and .Alexandra Nell as the baddie was, well, bad-ass! Again some faulted the lighting and music choices, but if they checked out director John Soto's other films they would see it's becoming a cool signature. You know you are in a Soto thriller! Well done gang. There are a lot of great indie flicks coming out of Western Australia so will hunt down some more...