Judges

I really liked it. Sure, it had problems, but I wasn't expecting a major studio polished offer. Soundtrack was great, most of the acting was at least passable. I thought the location shots added to the tone of the film well. I like spaghetti westerns, especially "Once Upon a Time in the West", and Judges tried hard to capture that (and did an all right job).

For me, the biggest problem was just not enough development of everyone in the film. The 15+ main characters are very well-varied (especially the Afrodeesiac and the Barber), and beg for more screen time and back story, but with a 90 minute film, that's just not possible. Maybe that will be fixed in Judges 2. Looking forward to it . . .

I can see where the film makers were going with this. But they never really reach their destination. It's supposed to be a homage to Spaghetti westerns albeit set in a sort of mythical modern time frame." But unfortunately it fall short in its attempt. It doesn't have that gritty realism that spaghetti westerns are known for. The characters are not vile and desperate enough like their Italian western counterparts. And, failing these two points, it lacks the humor of a successful parody. In fact it looks like they intended to make a serious film, but upon completion realized they had missed the mark so far that it couldn't possibly be taken seriously. Unfortunately, they also missed the humor mark by a mile. A whole lotta bad movie!

Avoid this crap at all costs. Bad script, bad directing, bad acting, bad editing, bad sound, and bad music. Get the idea? This movie tries to be western flavored, it's not. It tries to be hard core violent, it's not. It tries to present a fresh look at an old genre, it doesn't. The actors try there best, and my heart goes out to them. But with such inane material to work with it's hard to make something shine. To me this has all of the looks of a "fresh outta film school gonna set the world on fire" first attempt. Freshmen film makers often bite off more that they, or their budget, can chew. The best thing they can do is to take a few steps back, reassess what is possible, and work within their limited budget the next time out.

Have you ever seen Kill Bill? Allow me to point out that it was shot in a "Comic Book" style, i.e., EVERYTHING was exaggerated: from the dialogue to the action sequences, to the cinematography, the music and even the characters themselves are exaggerated. The reason why is that most comic books (that I have read anyway) have characters that are bigger than life and the themes are exaggerated perceptions of reality. So naturally, these type of films are going to seem kind of cheesy. Why? Because it is a fable. Nothing about it is based on reality. There are no mutants saving us from the destruction of other mutants bent on world domination, no struggling journalist who possesses spider-like capabilities, and no superhuman that can leap tall buildings in a single bound, and so far I have not seen a vigilante dressed up in a bat costume…well, except for Halloween, maybe.

Try to make a comic book based on the movie "Crash". It's not going to work.

My point is "Judges", like "Kill Bill" was shot in this fashion…an homage to the spaghetti western with a modern flair shot in a comic book fashion.

The only difference is, Mr. Tarantino has had a few features under his belt, had a professional Hollywood cast and crew and is backed up financially by the Weinsteins.

Mr Walker has only made one feature and only had the financial help of family and friends, and had his fellow film students as his cast and crew. The majority of the people involved in this feature were very green when it came to feature films. That being said, I think Mr. Walker did a great job with his first feature film. I have seen worse come from the seasoned "Hollywood professionals" than this newbie director from Virginia.

Sadly IMDb does not allow me to rate Judges lower than 1. What a shame. This ghastly movie is so bad that I actually turned the damned thing off well before the ending. The script had a few bright moments, but the directing, editing, acting, audio quality, and especially timing on line delivery was so abhorrent as make Judges utterly unbearable.

Judges was advertised as being like a modern day comic book style western, but in reality was nothing of the sort. What it is most like is dog poop on the bottom of your shoe. You can try to pretend it is okay, but it just keeps on stinking.

Why video stores think it is okay to carry this kind of crap with constant gaps in the audio and worse than high school drama class acting is beyond me. We rent movies in order to see something better that what is on television. But Judges is worse than the most pathetic SciFi Channel original. I intend to demand my money back from Hollywood Video.