Crime Story

For some reason (easy money), many former A list stars now appear in these no budget revenge thriller crap.

Why someone who appeared in classics like Jaws, Schindler's List or Die Hard would ruin their reputation with dreck like this is beyond me. These are seasoned pros. Surely at some point during pre-production they must have realized this would not be another John Wick.

This particular outing has it all. Shaky handheld cam in almost every scene, LSD trip color grading that looks absolutely atrocious. I can get better looking footage with my Canon EOS DSLR. Bad score, bad acting, terrible script....

Just why? There's no way this will turn a profit. Is it a gamble, is it a tax writeoff? I don't get it.

Extremely disappointed!!

Richard Dreyfus, Mira Sorvino top actors and horrible directing!! This movie was all over the place!!

I love any movies that have to do with mob bosses retired mob bosses anything that has to do with the mafia and watching this was nothing what I expected!

Waste of a rental but most importantly waste of 1hr 40min.

That was 1 hour and 38 minutes I will never get back. Don't waste your movie watching time on this dud. I watched it thinking how bad can it be with Richard Dreyfuss starring in it. But what is this, his name is listed as just one of the cast, way down on the list. I guess I don't blame him for not wanting top credit for this waste of digital bytes saved desperately to this digital movie cloud only to become rain and evaporate.

That was definitely one of the worst endings I've ever seen. It felt like the director just gave up and stitched together whatever he could. And what the hell happened to Mira Sorvino? She was awful in this. It was cool to see Richard Dreyfuss in the movies again but he couldn't save whatever I just watched. I was set on rating this film a 5 but that ending was terrible. 4 stars.

I can't believe what I saw made the final cut-to-market. This film by Adam Lipsius should be a film school example of what NOT to do.

Firstly, this is the perfect example of how a score can make or break a film, and this has to be one of the worst. I'm used to the typical annoyingly loud, overbearing, non-stop and unfitting score in B-grade films, but this was a whole new level of annoying. At the start, I kept yelling at Dreyfuss to "answer the damn door!". But it was the score - a constant knocking sound. Throughout, you'll hear clanging, ringing, banging etc... was there even a composer in this production, or just some random tools in a garage being slammed around?

Then you have Lipsius' incoherent and convoluted story, with dialogue and scenes that will make you shake your head. Why did he shoot the bathroom door where Nan was if he loved and cared about her so much? Don't even get me started on the plot and technical issues, that made what was supposed to be a criminal underworld story, feel inept, unconvincing and boring as it gets. And that's a real shame, when this is supposed to be "based on true events", and you end up scratching your head and yawning by the end.

Next, you have the barely legible muddled dialogue of Dreyfuss, that when combined with his slow and poorly postured demeanor, I thought he was constipated throughout the entire film. Add in Pruitt Taylor Vince's character Tommy, and you have two geriatric actors trying to get through filming. Aside from their snail-paced movements (I'm sure blame falls on Lipsius' failure to direct his cast properly), the entire film's slow pacing, made the normally comfortable 98 min runtime feel endless. Even Mira Sorvino's performance seemed like it was her first ever acting gig (again, due to Lipsius' failure to direct his cast properly).

His (twitchy) camerawork and cinematography were just awful, and this film needed some serious editing. I really can't find anything redeeming about Crime Story. It's a very generous 3/10 from me (much better than the current 0% on Rotten Tomatoes), all going to the Oscar winners out of pity they'll have this mess on their resumes.