American Badger

Granted, I had never heard about writer and director Kirk Caouette's 2021 action thriller "American Badger" prior to now in 2022, as I had the opportunity to sit down and watch it. So I had no expectations to the movie, nor did I know what I was in for here, aside from it being a movie that I hadn't already seen.

And when you notice that the lead actor is also the director and writer, then I have to say that I am starting to doubt a project. And thus it was with "American Badger", but I opted to watch it, especially since the movie had been given a 7.8 rating here on IMDb - in this very writing moment.

But I have to say that "American Badger" was not as great as the rating would otherwise indicate. Sure, the action sequences were fairly nice and definitely carried the movie a great long way, but the storyline was just bland. And I have to say that "American Badger" felt like a somewhat watered down version of "John Wick". So yeah, there was that whole thing here.

The storyline didn't have much appeal to me, and it was somewhat of a drag to sit through "American Badger", I have to be bluntly honest. And while the action sequences were good, then they could only do so much for a movie with an inferior script and storyline, and not really having much of an interesting character gallery.

I wasn't familiar with the cast in "American Badger", and that is something I enjoy in movies, even in "American Badger", despite the fact that the movie was not particularly outstanding. Well, I did recognize Zak Santiago, though.

My rating of "American Badger" lands on a four out of ten stars. There are far better and more memorable action thrillers out there.

This film resonates through the heart of all badgers and there loved ones across the planet. Kirk Caouette has done it again his directing and writing skills shine big time here, his chemistry on the screen with his co-star Andrea Stefancikova is nothing short of phenomenal and to be able to do all this and perform his wild stunts while dressed a badger is sensational. The only let down of the movie for me was actress Tristan Risk her hair was rotten in it, I mean rank.

The trailer looked cool so I decided to give it a shot. After doing some IMDB research I found out the lead also wrote, directed and produced this film. You can tell he worked hard on it with a small budget so I was kinda routing for his character. The movie starts out ok but as the film went on I became less interested. It just kinda drags along with these strange scenes of pretty much nothing going on. About half way through I became bored with the lead character and film all together. Turned it off and looked for something else to watch. Although, it wasn't a bad attempt at making your own movie it just wasn't for me. 4 stars.

Stuntman and cancer survivor (his bio is very interesting) turned novice filmmaker Kirk Caouette stars, directs, wrote, produced, stunt coordinated, and composed the music for this low budget Indie B film, and it was actually not bad - all things considered.

Sure, the story is nothing new, and has been told many times before, but it was still enjoyable right to the end. I feel there needed to be more/better editing. Too many unnecessary shots, and the slow-mo was overused. The normally comfortable 82 mins felt longer with all those useless shots. Then there's the more cigarettes smoked than words spoken issue. I'm guessing all this was to make this a sort of art-house film. The score was actually very fitting for a B film. Although I wasn't impressed with the shaky-cam and poorly filmed first action scene, every other action scene was good, a few impressively John Wick-ish.

Caouette took many risks wearing so many hats, but at the end, I feel they paid off. Like I said, nothing new or extraordinary, but for a newb filmmaker on a tight budget, it's an enjoyable film. Props to Caouette for pulling it off.

Vanity projects seldom work even with Hollywood A-listers. When you have a Z-list director/actor doing his own voice-over on an ultra-low-budget indie ... well, let's just say the odds of a successful project are slim and none. And Slim just left town. Every low-budget fail is right there on the screen .. poor lighting, a sound track based on random noises from an electronic keyboard, terrible editing, and an incoherent script. Even the much-touted fight scenes are just a blur, a smudge, of motion that the viewer can barely see.