Echoes of War

I challenge anyone to sit and watch this movie in its entirety. The writers of this material must have been really really high when writing this. And the people who funded this must have been even higher. The people behind this couldn't have made this any more boring if they had tried. Stupidity begets stupidity.

I picked up this movie really cheap ($1.25) from a dollar store in my neighbourhood, since I quite often like to look at obscure movies since there are some real gems hidden out there. However, it didn't take long into watching it to determine that this was one movie that deserves to be unknown. Now, unlike some of the other user commenters here, I didn't find the acting to be particularly bad - nothing exceptional, but it was acceptable. And for what had to be a REALLY low budget, the filmmakers managed to stretch out every penny that they had (though I will admit that the movie isn't exactly lavish). But there is one big problem with the movie that sinks it, and that it is *painfully* slow and almost totally uneventful. Scene after scene goes by where *nothing* of real significance happens. You have to wait until 85% of the movie has gone by before things start really cooking, and then it's dealt with in just a manner of minutes. In the end, the movie seems to have no point at all, unless it was to be a nice tax write-off for the investors.

Well, I just wonder if you ever watched NBC's singing contest program, "The Voice". Did you ever feel that you were going crazy when you listened to one of the coaches, Adam Levine? He usually got nothing to say, but that did not stop him to blah, blah and blah, blabbering with lot of hollow words, beating about the bush endlessly, like he was trapped in his own hollow words and didn't know how to stop and get out of it. Why a guy with nothing to say but still tried so hard to say something that he did not know what he was saying or talking about? So every time when its his turn to say something but couldn't find the exact words or thoughts he's trying to say but did not realize he just tried to talk about something out of nothing, at that time, you lost your temper and patience, jumped up from the sofa, yelled and screamed at the image of Adam Levin on the screen: "SHUT UP! JUST SHUT UP!"

Did you ever attend a college class with a lousy professor who mysteriously got the tenure to teach the students who tried to learn something but only got clueless garbled rubbish from him?

Did you ever tried to listen to some of the idiotic politicians to deliver a hollow speech in front of the voters?

This film is exactly like what I have to point out as the above-mentioned.

There was actually nothing to say, the storyline was just a very thin and short straight line; you could actually put all the words in half page. The whole movie is like it could be told all in the short synopsis out of a very very short story, but miraculously turned out to be a 600 pages big novel.

The whole movie was snail-crawling from the very beginning to the end without almost nothing to tell, so a scene of shaving head or cutting, chopping wood, walking through the forest, or woke up from nightmares, praying, press flowers between book pages, eating, skinning animals....all in close-up like slow motion crap. We also saw a camera usually followed behind the actors without any special purpose, the shaky scenes usually prolonged quite a while for nothing to tell specially.

This pathetic movie, I think, was actually written and directed by Adam Levine.

Nothing happens in this. Seriously...nothing! If you're going to rehash the tired Hatfield and McCoy-type saga, either make it bold and fresh, or go figure out something else to do. To call this boring and pedestrian is an understatement. I would have rather been coughed on by strangers with COVID19 than to kill a half hour on this.

Screenwriters John Chriss and Kane Senes have provided a screenplay filled with way too many western cliché's and not enough original content. Re Senes' direction, the sluggish pace causes this film to spiral out of control. The acting in the film is also weak. James Badge Dale is very one dimensional in his role as the war veteran. William Forsythe's character is also a lost cause: acting as the antagonist in the film, you neither understand, nor do you care about the events of his past that have lead to the person he is now. Echoes of War is a film that struggles to resonate any true enjoyment for its viewers. A story that is not original and is in fact quite boring, it is destined to ride off into the sunset and out of our memories very quickly. Don't waste one second of your time on this film. You can thank me later!