Footsteps

Painfully slow,amateurish and downright poorly acted first effort from a writer director who's clearly been renting Gaspar Noe/Toshiaki Toyoda style films out at blockbusters a long time. This as none of the wit originally or charm of other lower budget British directors like Simon Rumley or Chris Cooke. Save your time on this and go watch the likes of Red Road or This Is England.

Normally I'd be the 1st to give a first time writer/director a break, but its a shame we get sham reviewers building films up to be more than they are. In who's book honestly is this a 9 or 10 ? They are clearly insider comments/ratings, sad as I highly respect mandiapple having read her reviews for years, she's oddly been someone who's pointed me in the direction of the film makers who's style Footsteps is clearly trying to emulate.

For me I'd of most likely given this film a 4 for a nice first attempt but to balance the way off other ratings its getting a 2. I do hope you come back soon Gareth, hopefully you could learn one big lesson with this first feature and try make the people in front of the camera feel more comfortable, that way the viewer would feel more comfy and be able to enjoy the film.

This film is noteworthy for being the directorial debut of Gareth Evans, best know for making the "Raid" films a few years after this. This film is something totally different.

It's a very low-budget crime film. It's very amateurish. The acting is pretty bad, with one notable exception. And the movie sounds terrible. The audio is very bad for the duration of the film, peaking all over the place and cutting in and out, which makes this very difficult and frustrating to watch. It's almost a chore for that reason. When sound is done well in a movie, it goes unnoticed by most. That's the goal. Here, however, it is all too noticeable and a constant distraction and hindrance. It makes the film feel like a rough cut, like it's unfinished.

It even feels like there are some scenes missing. I understand that they didn't want to spoon-feed us every answer here, but it feels like some stuff was unintentionally left out, as if they never got around to shooting it or just tired or ran out of time or money and gave up.

Apart from that, however, the story is actually decent. And the camerawork is fun. They really made the most out of their low-quality digital camera gear. The video editing is well-done as well. You can sort of see hints of things to come in this early film of his. Notably, the action and violence pretty well done compared to the more lacking dramatic moments, so it's no surprise Evans would go on to focus on more action-heavy films.

Additionally, the filmmakers made use of some pretty good locations for such a low budget film. They got creative when they had to, and it really pays off here. Overall, this film feels a bit like Christopher Nolan's "Following," except with really bad audio and not nearly as much of that low-budget charm.

Also worth mentioning are a few very fun, original parts that are like nothing I've seen anywhere else. Most of these take place during the film's climax, which is fun but still sounds just as bad as the rest of the film. There are three or four of these moments, and they're really wonderful, gritty, brutal and strange moments that almost make the whole experience worthwhile.

The film is highly flawed, but I think that its makers really learned something from it. I think it's thanks to this film that Evans was able to make a better film the next time around, and then an even better one after that. He's learned a lot and come a long way.

As usual the cast and crew have written the first few reviews! I wonder why they bother when surely everybody by now knows that anything with a decent rating and a low number of votes must just be being pimped by the people who made it.

Please don't waste your time watching this total garbage. It looks like it was made by schoolkids. The violence is laughably badly done (think 8 year olds pretending to play war or something - punches that don't connect, blood out of a ketchup bottle, etc. etc.). The endless 'thoughtful' silences at least have the decency to let you know the film is going to be boring as hell within the first 10 minutes.

The camera work is awful, with the usual shaky-cam work trying to give it a gritty feel (I would suggest changing the sheets on your bed Mr Director - bound to be some grit floating about there), sometimes the main subject of a shot is out of focus while, for instance, a bus window frame is in focus... poor poor poor. If they can't even get the basic mechanics of film-making right it's no wonder the end result is a total waste of film, money, effort and more importantly the viewer's time.

Watching Battlefield Earth is a better use of your time.

I read the previous review, and I thought I'd have my say.

For me footsteps, is an excellent film. If Hollywood violence and sexy performances are what you're after then possibly this film isn't for you. What footsteps delivers is one mans journey through darkness.

I commend Gareth Evans for this film, I don't quite understand what the previous comment meant when they said it was amateurish, for me this is one of the best films to be shot on DV. Excellent in style, and while the pace of the film does start quite slow, it does draw you in, I thought Nicholas Bool was fantastic in it. If your expecting Tarantino Esq dialogue and charisma then yes you'll be disappointed, but Evans has clearly not set out to make that sort of film and I thought he got an excellent performance out of Bool.

It has some heavy violence, and no its not pretty its horrible, but Mr Evans is clearly not setting out to make an exploitation picture here, he presents this dark world as, well dark. I believed I could have been in the scene, it was that realistic.

The film has won awards and rightly so, while everyone is entitled to their opinion I personally believe the last review was a poor one and that this is a film to be commended.

Have to admit, after reading the "glowing" reviews from the cast and crew I already expected this one to fail, and when I got to the negative comments I figured I was in for a tough time. But to be honest while its hardly deserving the praise its gotten it doesn't deserve the hate either. The beginning could've done with a bit more of anything the lack of dialogue had me almost skipping forward a number of times and the sound was off in places. But as it went along and once people started actually talking instead of just sitting around in silence looking moody I actually started to like the film despite its flaws.

Its far from a 9 or 10 star film but for what looks to be a low budget film I felt there was nothing that wrong with it. The gore is good in parts, there's a bit with a foot stab that looked good, the acting is decent enough couple of dodgy actors but mostly OK.

Not brilliant, not rubbish, worth a look.