New Blood

So bland I barely managed to sit through it. A combination of the most dull cliches from every true-crime movie I've ever seen. Predictable plot goes nowhere verrrry slowly. Joe Pantogliano is excellent and barely recognizable. Unfortunately he barely appears in this movie. Carrie-Anne Moss is more feminine and interesting than she was in The Matrix, but she gets about 5 minutes of screen time and less than 10 lines. John Hurt is pretty good in basically the same role he always plays. His character was sort of interesting, for a while. Everything else about the film is breathtakingly average. Even the gunfights are absolutely basic, bare-bones and old hat. Don't waste your time, watch The Matrix or Blade again. And if you just want to see Carrie-Anne naked, go hunt for The Soft Kill, because you won't see that here (the one thing that could have given it SOME value).

This is a typical 90's Crimefilm. Now I've seen lots of films like this lately, and this is not a bad one, not excellent either. Those who watch lots of B-films(like me) might think that this is just ok.

There's good actors, the Script is kinda ok, and there's some welldone gunbattles.

A poor rip-off of Tarantino and Steve Soderbergh. You could see everything coming from a mile away, and all the fancy cinematic tricks, such as flashbacks, looping chronology and those annoying mini-freeze-frames whcih occur throughout the movie don't help it one bit. Worst of all was Nick Moran's acting. I don't know who he is, but he seemed like he was reading his lines from the first time off a cue card. It was like watching him in a fifth-grade play. I'm sure this director could do a lot better, with maybe better material next time. After all, it's only his first movie. I'd give him another chance. But that Nick Moran yahoo, he's better learn how to bus tables or mix drinks. BTW, Carrie-Ann Moss looked superb.

This was not a terrible film. It was merely a poor execution of current noir film styles. The pacing was slow. The script was melodramatic in places. It is unfortunate that the dramatic pause has become an overused device. The lighting was film school quality at best. Just because the subject matter is "dark" doesn't mean that I should be unable to see the actors. The editor seemed to be overly entertained by nifty but superfluous techniques. Much like a verbal pause, the film pause can become tiresome and overused. I cannot blame the actors for their flat delivery, I have seen them all in other films giving dynamic and believable performances. If the actors were doing what they were told, then we have to blame the director. The plot was very contrived. It took elements from a number of hit movies (Usual Suspects and City on Fire among them) and smothered them. A number of clichés were employed in an attempt to make us care about the characters. They all failed. In a three dimensional world, two dimensional plots get you nowhere.

This was a real stinker. Boring and predictable from beginning to end. And worst of all a complete waste of a great cast including John Hurt, Joe Pantoliano, Carrie-Anne Moss (Cypher and Trinity from The Matrix) and Nick Moran. The center plot revolves around a man (Hurt) whose daughter needs a new heart. They don't seem to be able to find one, until the man's son (Moran) pops up, offering his heart in exchange of his fathers services. The father has to play the part of a kidnapped millionaire who was accidentally killed by Moran's gang. But he can't tell that to his boss and his 'businesspartners' (Pantoliano and Moss). This goes on for a while until the movie wraps up nicely and predictably after a grotesque shootout. 3/10