Death Run to Istanbul

Now, I've seen my share of rather bad movies. White Fire. Carnival Magic. Friday the 13th part 2, Super Ninja Zombie Master, The Mexican, etc. So I think I have a lot of backing when I can come out and say this is really a waste of a lot of things. Talent is not one of these things. No talent is wasted here, because there is no talent. I don't know how the women of this company (of the three "movies" I've seen by this company, Flight to Danger, Street Angels, and this one, two were written by women, and subblimate some hokey feminist values, i.e., R.A.D. funding, ugly women and "stud" guys)...are on. I don't think they expected much from these films, but they'll live on forever on DVD thanks to Brentwood (yay brentwood!). I don't know where to begin. This "movie" is just a mess. A total and complete mess. I've had more concise and clear acid trips. Let me just list a few of the "films" biggest problems: -long, borring, unaudible and visually unapealing scenes. -random, borring "martial arts" fights. -incoherent "plot" (if it even has one- guess what, nobody ever goes to istanbull!) - scene continuity (ugh, where to begin- second to last scene you can hear the director say "cut!", girl is shown escaping, but then shown still captured in next scene) I'm getting flashbacks just thinking about it, so I'm going to stop now, but believe me when i say i could write a 100 page paper on why this thing is a complete disaster (not that i plan to). It was a sort of funny movie in its baddness, but it really is quite bad. The coolest part of the film was the underused big-muscle mamma "Kat". If you want to have a good time, read the back of the brentwoods "women that kick butt" dvd synopsis of the movie, then watch the movie and see how much they flat-out lied to you (I still love you Brentwood).

It won't take you more than five minutes to realize how bad "Death Run to Istanbul" is. Production values, acting, plotting, sound mix, "action" choreography, etc. are all pitiful. Most people gave it 1/10, and I don't blame them. However, I have a soft spot for women who practice martial arts, and this film has three of those, so I'll give it a 2. Just two trivial observations:

1) Don't believe the title. The people who made this film barely had enough money to shoot outside their neighborhood, much less in Istanbul.

2) Near the end a unknown music band appears out of nowhere and plays a song. I assume they were friends of some cast or crew members, but I hope they didn't seriously think that appearing in this film was going to be their "big break".

Problems with this are:

• Comic-bookesque dialogue with poor delivery and unconvincing, stilted interactions.

• 1-dimensional characters with unclear motives. General disorganision in shooting. i.e. Camera-mans shadow, by-standers.

• 10,000, 15,000 or 50,000 dollars needed? Well, what's the difference anyway... Why does the main character run so slowly!!!!?

• This movie is practically a show-reel for some mediocre martial artists who have mistakenly dabbled in speaking parts.

• Shot with a consumer-quality handi-cam.

• Inappropriate use of music.

• And, inappropriate use of music.

Just to point out some details: the cast is not exactly talented, there is basically no story (falling asleep while you carry a full briefcase of drugs? escaping from a flat and then staying to hang out in the street just one block from there?), continuity is

missing (there is a swimming pool sequence with lots of people in one scene and basically no one in the next one), props are useless (a tv remote control as a mobile phone), and camerawork is just awful (wait for 4 seconds for a car to arrive in the scene?).

I must begin with an admission, which will explain my warning. I only checked this out because an acquaintance of mine is in this, uh, movie. You must take my warning seriously - there is no other reason to see this. None whatsoever. Ignore this warning at your peril. I get the impression of a small group of people getting together on this project, maybe they all go to the same martial arts school. All fine and good; they get a video camera and then proceed to make the worst possible concoction of video images. There's an early chase scene, but both the pursued and pursuer content themselves with jogging it out; the pursuer even starts to walk at one point; then they're jogging again. In the so-called fight scenes it looks like the participants didn't realize the camera was on and were just practicing; then they ran out of video and had to go on to another scene. The choreography - I think someone's credited for it; I hope he or she wasn't paid. It's one of those cases, a guy is hit in the stomach and grabs his knee in pain. The dialog - kind of a nineties Ed Wood feel to it. But Ed Wood was kind of funny. Not this, no, not this. Heed my warning, my friends, for we will all live in the future of this.

It's no surprise I was never clear on the plot or the point. The main character owes money to local thugs and is a druggie. So he spends a lot of time jogging away from them. I believe it's the L.A. area. It also looks like some portions of scenes are missing; either they ran out of video or didn't care to complete the job. But the, uh, movie is too long as it is. You know that old saying about 90 minutes of your life you'll never get back? I always thought that attitude was taking things too seriously - it's only bad movies - so what, right? This, uh, movie changed my mind. This can be very serious. If you watch this, it may sour you on movies for a few weeks, sort of like throwing up after drinking too much vodka one night. I almost forgot: no mention of Istanbul in the actual, uh, movie. No death run either; just some jogging.