Christmas Crime Story

My goodness this was just great!! SO well done..... Definitely had to take a lot of work to put the entire thing together and have it all mashup so nicely... BRAVO!!

Pointless film piece that resembles a high school disaster. Aside from the two Santa suits and a fake tree, there was nothing Christmas related about this film. Redundantly,replaying the same scenes over and over again does nothing to improve this film other than to milk more film reel space. Could have been shown in a half hour span and still get the point across.

Overall this was a really fun movie with solid performances. The storyline is told in a non-linear fashion, so it plays like a puzzle that we're putting together as we go. Every time a new character is introduced or we see a new storyline, we're given a new piece of the puzzle, and it's really fun to see how things play out.

Indie movies are always hit or miss, especially ones that go straight to video, but this really was a solid watch. Nice performances, solid writing, great direction, and you can just tell the actors and crew are having fun making the film. This might be a small film, but it's a damn good one.

The characters do absolutely nothing but sit in a restaurant and talk! None of them orders any food! So very boring! I have seen this too many times in too many movies. The idiot director doesn't seem to know what to do with the characters. All these people do is hang around in restaurants! In real life, NO restaurant allows people to come in there and not order any food! You can't just come in there and sit down and talk! Why would anyone make such a ridiculous film??? I was so bored, I couldn't even watch it!

'Christmas crime story' tries to be that type of film that tells a story, by way of a fractured timeline mostly in reverse, of several individuals and the unexpected ways their jumbled lives intersect. In that intent it does succeed, and each story as it unfolds is sufficiently intriguing to grab our attention to one extent or another. There are degrees of success, though, and try as it may, I think this effort is perhaps best described as "adequate."

Sordid though they generally are, some of the characters are very sympathetic, especially as themes present in their story threads. On the other hand, there's so much drama herein that it feels maudlin at points, to say nothing of specific scenes or lines of dialogue that are overdone as they present. While each scene is executed fairly well as it presents, it's hard not to feel like the end result is a little overbearing: an overabundance of tragedy and sorrow, with almost no counterbalance. And that above all may be the greatest downfall here. I've seen no few movies that were terribly depressing, but in at least one if not many other ways they were very well made, and very worthwhile. Here, however, the performances are of varying quality, story beats get our attention but hold it to varying fruition, and each "segment" is so straightforward in its presentation that there's not much to "write home about" in terms of technical craft.

It's not outright bad. I want to like it more than I do - and also wonder if I'm being too generous. The picture that we get isn't engrossing so much as it is bleak, and nihilistic, without any meaningful thrills, heart, or emotional payoff to offset the preponderance of cruelty and degradation. It's like an extra down-beat Christmas variant of the "tragic horror" RPG Ten Candles, built on an despair and definite bad endings at every turn, yet with no effective hooks to keep us engaged. The end sequence tries to offer recompense, but it feels like a non sequitur, and too little too late. Unable to achieve any equalization as it is, 'Christmas crime story' is relegated to at best a very average quality - not terrible, but not necessary, either. There are some good ideas, but a rough, barbarous, indelicate hand rends them atwain. There are worse ways to spend 96 minutes, true, but there are also many far better cinematic experiences deserving of your time.

Oh well.