88

Gwen (Katharine Isabelle) suddenly notices that she's at a diner in a fugue state. She has flashes of memories and troubling signs. She finds a gun in her bag and accidentally shoots the waitress. She escapes from the cops and continues her crime spree.

This is a mess. The bigger question is if it's a fitting mess. The premise is that Gwen is confused but the movie ends up confusing me. This is definitely ambitious and I can applaud that. It's just not done well. I do like the actors. I expected Isabelle to do two completely differing characterization for before in her flashbacks and after the diner. That should be the better path.

Every once in awhile you see a movie and get surprised at least I do. Nowadays anyone with half a brain can see a bad movie coming..... This movie had me thinking B - Grade movie. Names were not to familiar to me. Katherine Isabelle was awesome and surprised the heck out of me. Yes, it was a little bit to much to follow , here , there , this time , that time but I settled in.........on the performance of Katherine. I would say it is a must see over a lot of movies with higher billing and more famous stars. The 10 lines.........agh. Cool movie , surprisingly good actress carrying the entire movie with ease. Katherine Isabelle is stunning in more ways than one in this performance hope to see her do more.

Short Review: This writer wrote a very positive review of American Mary (here on the IMDb) noting that it was not only a superbly produced and directed little indie, but that it finally gave Isabelle room to shine, and she was brilliant in it. The implication was that casting directors would take note and her next film would be a step up .... well, that did not exactly happen....

Longer Review: To understand this film you need to understand two things initially:

(a) The films made and distributed in the 1970s were a reaction by film-makers to industrial-quality and soul-less films produced in the 60s, possibly the last decade where the big studios from the 1930s still held sway. The films of the 70s -- now almost a "lost decade" to reviewers -- deliberately broke all the rules of editing, pacing, cinematography, continuity ... to be different, to make a point. As such, they succeeded, but they still were not especially good films, nor did audiences get much joy from them.

(b) what the Canadian and Austalian film industry have in common is that both are creatures of government fiscal policy, not responses to viewer demand. In other words, both were artificially created by bureaucrats. In the case of Canada, the industry lucked out when American producers, fed up with high costs and tough unions, saw a chance to reduce top-line costs by shooting in the North. While the Canadian industry is financially successful, and has spawned some excellent product, it still remains the easiest venue in which to produce knock-offs, bad sequels, and B-movies where the main goal is a successful financing and not necessarily a satisfied audience.

SO...

With these two concepts firmly in mind, I would opine that Isabelle's much-awaited followup to American Mary is, disappointingly, a weird and vacuous homage to the 70s style of film-making, featuring an incomprehensible plot, erratic direction and editing, and massive stretches with no dialog at all because -- frankly -- that saves even more top-line money for the production. That it was produced in Canada only serves to emphasize how this was at its core a financial exercise, not an artistic one. And to those reviewers who dare suggest that the presence of Christopher Lloyd and Michael Ironside somehow raises this to an A-class production, all I can say PA-LEEZE, the former is at a point in his career where any work is good work; and the latter has of late mainly become a voice actor for animation. (The fact that Ironside himself is Canadian and started his career by making Canadian films in the 70s only adds a new and un-needed sheen of irony to any discussion of "88").

-88 (2015) movie review: -88, which is already on Netflix?, is an action thriller about a girl who's former mob-ish boss kills her fiancé, so she goes nuts and tries to kill him. Only problem is that after the incident, she develops a sort-of new, mild personality that does not remember anything; an event that happens after traumatic events occasionally.

-I feel like 88 had the proper amount of cheesy and lame elements in it for me to hate on it, but then it threw in just enough good elements for me to say 'Eh' about it. So here is an 'eh' review: -The story feels new, but every element of the way they did the story, from the Reservoir Dogs past-to-present cuts, to the quick flashback cuts from EVERY MOVIE EVER, so literally the same ending as Rage. Okay, not the same, but similar. In fact, this film is 2015's Rage.

-The pace is good, but the flashbacks are even out of order, making some of them feel unnecessary, and making the film feel a little too long. For an 88 minute film.

-The acting. So Katharine Isabelle did a fine job. She was believable, but not great. She really tried hard. Christopher Lloyd did a fine job. He was believable and good, but he did not really have to try, and it shows. Tim Doiron is pretty bad. And Michael Ironside showed up in it, hurting my opinion of the film even more with his generic acting.

-The characters are all generic and cliché. Like I said, this film offers little-to-nothing new.

-The music was weird and almost Tarantino weird. Almost.

-A few of the scenes I thought were good and well done, and others I thought were student-film quality. Like 'Oh my gosh. I can't believe they are not dead.' I will give mega props to the ending. Although I totally should have known how it would end, I thought the ending helped pull the film out of the 'eh' for me. Like Rage from 2014….

-88 is also Rated-R for language, a somewhat strong amount of underwear, and bad blood effects everywhere.

-Anyway, 88 had a few redeeming features like the actual story or the ending, but I don't think they quite make up for bad fights, lame characters (and actors), and cliché everythings. As good as the ending was, 88 is not really worth the time.

Must confess I'm quite disappointed after watching this because it seemed to be a good movie and I thought it would be so but it wasn't, I got bored several times. If you watch this you will see many deaths, a lot of blood and a storyline that could be great. There are two things I really liked about this movie, the first one is the fact that at first the storyline gets really confusing, flashbacks here, flashbacks there, two girls on scene (two personalities), one single actress, you don't know which one is real and which one isn't so you want to know how this story will end because you really don't know what's happening and that kept me watching the movie until the end. The second thing I liked was of course the acting of Katharine Isabelle, I really don't know why this girl isn't in a Hollywood movie, she is sufficiently good to be part of a big project, she is even better than those well-paid actresses that their only talent is to be pretty, anyway she did a really good job making the storyline more realistic, but despite her good acting there's nothing she could have done to enhance this movie because the director and the writers are responsible for the poor results, in my opinion clearly.

Finally I can't recommend this movie, 4 stars is the best I can give and most of it was thanks to Katharine Isabelle.