The Broken Key

I believe that this movie was made so bloody awful on purpose, and it *is* so bad that it's actually funny, like in The Producers.

It's like when you wake up and you remember your dream - flows illogically from one scene and action to another unrelated scene and action, and so on. This is one weird movie!

Yes, so bad it's funny...but not funny enough to ignore these reviews and watch it!

Never have so many great actors been so betrayed as by this insipid, plotless movie.

This film just doesn't make sense. The dialogue, when not inaudible due to the musical score making unheard, is just nonsense. Coupling terrible directing and odious scripts means that I really could not make any sense of what characters were feeling.

For example, character voices cry out top volume in fear as soon as another new character enters focus despite being unknown to the protagonist and seconds before launching into a terribly choreographed fight scene.

Most of the actors are examples of once great actors who now are too tired to give a good interpretation of the script. No surprise to see the terribly depressing form of Michael Madsen there. I expected to see him with another washed-up actor of Tim Sizemore, but he manages to butcher the scenes enough on his own.

Another reviewer wrote about how this film is like nails down a blackboard. I think this is an apt description of scenes that jump around like some Junior film student's project made using home video segments rather than having a set and crew along with others who should have pulled together the show into some kind of discernible storyline or plot. Instead this film is honestly one of the worst ones I have ever seen.

If you want more evidence for how bad this film is, then consider this. My friends are all avid movie watchers. We've all sat through some turkeys in our time, but this was the first film we have ever watched that caused several caffeinated and sugar-high adults to fall asleep during watching it. We've NEVER done that before or since this movie.

The shots are so nice, the plot has possibilities. But the movie lacks direction, refinement, and certainly money. All the sound is post-synced. The music sounds like a compilation of classical music which starts at the beginning of the film, never is muted, and then the voiceovers are completely out of sync. Even Rutger Hauer has a foreign accent!

Horrible, had to stop after 25 minutes.

The average rating of 4.x on this movie is generous. The writing is as bad as the written movie summary. The acting is non-existent, as the roles require nothing in this area. The story line is vaporous and plot non-existent.

The only positive point of this movie is rather good CGI... but these days such can be cranked out of someone's home computer using Blender, and gets no stars from me in the light of everything else in the film.

It is reasonable to assume most viewers will find this an incredibly long 2 hours. This movie just drags on, more so than most movies we've seen of this kind. It's not just bad, it's slow and bad.

Rutger Hauer seems to have a knack for choosing the worst roles these days. He brings his usual stoic half-humor to the role, but even that can't raise this film above 2 stars for me. This is definitely a "pass it by" film, with the non-audience better off for choosing to do so.