Stranded

The movie actually had a decent plot to it. It starts with Scott Eastwood as a marine about to be executed and then it tells his story of how he got into this mess through a flashback, as a surfer who gets into trouble.

Dawn Patrol had good twist and turns to it and great potential for drama, but the dialog in the film was horrible, and i'm really surprise by how bad the acting was to this dialog.

The whole thing reminds me of movies like the Crying Game and the Sixth Sense, were the movie has a surprise twist at the end, and this one was cut together well enough to get an eyebrow raised, but the biggest difference between those movies and Dawn Patrol, is that those movies are worth sitting through.

Well cheer up, Scott Eastwood, I don't think your daddy did anything worth seeing until his, thirties anyway. This movie is just too dull and uninteresting to put anytime into it.

I have long been a fan of Jeff Fahey so initially sat down to watch it just because Mr Fahey was in it., The story and the characters did hook me though and I am very pleased I watched it. Without giving too much of the plot away, the characters are mostly flawed but also mostly likable as they do what they feel they have to in order to keep their families together......and I can mostly sympathise with them all to a certain extent. Particularly loved the ending too.

The bio is all wrong though. Yes John is held at gunpoint and he tells his story in a series of flashbacks......but it is not set in a distant desert......it's set in California and the sand they are trudging through is a beach near Malibu in California, not a "distant desert" at all.

John (Scott Eastwood) is from a poor surfer family. His parents, Shelia (Rita Wilson) and Trick (Jeff Fahey), run a struggling surfing shop. His brother Ben (Chris Brochu) catches his girlfriend Donna (Kim Matula) with Miguel. Later, John finds Ben shot dead in the head on the beach. At a later time, John is a Marine in a foreign desert held prisoner by an Arab woman. The flashbacks reveal a tale of revenge, deceit, betrayal, guilt, and dread.

The story is a grinding muddle. Scott Eastwood may be more photogenic than his father but lacks his inner intensity. He doesn't have the charisma to take over a movie. It could still work as a harden family crime drama but the future story takes away whatever tension is left. Once the reveal is done, the movie struggles for another half hour. Then there is a final twist which only leaves the story feeling silly.

Let's see, a bunch of unlikable characters doing unlikable things. Throw in an absurd story line, and you have a loser of a film.

There wasn't a single character I cared about or had any sympathy for, including the "hero" of the story.

Even as a "B" movie, this was bad. With so many other movies out there, please, don't waste your time on this one. Why it got made is a mystery. Why it failed so badly at the box office isn't. It got limited release in theaters, and was on disk 5 weeks later. That should tell you something. As does the 0% critic score and 9% audience rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

Need I say more?

It started out weak but wound up being really good!