Landmine Goes Click

Men are drawn to anger or vengeance in a very primal form, from display of injustice to random road rage. There's something viscerally fascinating about people trapped in extreme predicament, and this movie capitalizes on this so well. With only three simple acts, it's a startlingly engaging clash of personalities, although this may get a tad overly intense or violent.

Story follows a group of friends while they are on vacation. Unfortunately, one of them steps on a landmine. Thus they find themselves in precarious position, especially when they are harboring a nasty secret and an unfriendly local stumbles upon them. For the sake of not revealing too much, the plot is not complex, in fact it's very streamlined to more effectively convey the emotions.

This is also not a big budget movie, its presentation practically hinges around the small cast of actors. There are many continuous shots at play here, each scene would resume for a good few minutes, giving the characters plenty of time to plead, antagonize or scream at each other. It doesn't have much gimmickry, often relying on the human drama to carry each scene.

It's a steady approach for thrill that's astonishingly effective in its simplicity. Audience would be engrossed in the struggle just by the sheer grim of the situation. However, this also creates a couple of problems. One being that the condition itself is rather implausible, mainly exaggerated for dramatic purpose. The second is the use of violence, this is by nature a very visceral story, even though it's mostly psychological, but it might not be everyone's cup of tea.

Landmine Goes Click does one thing very well, as soon as it triggers there's a very intense mentally exhausting and gritty human drama, it's a cavemen reaction and a surprisingly compelling one.

This is one of those movies where I constantly had mixed feelings about it. Sometimes I thought the movie wasn't going anywhere, plus that the acting is not the greatest but at the end I thought it wasn't a bad movie at all. There were some scenes that were hard to watch. Scenes where I wanted to jump out of my couch and beat the crap out of some characters but when I think about it, it is a good thing that I felt like that because it means that the story got to me. At one point I thought it was never going to end and one character in particular was really annoying me. It's a low budget movie, with no outstanding actors, but the story all fits together at the end. It's about revenge and it gets emotional. Moral of the story, don't do to others what you don't want to be done to you.

The difficulty reviewing a film like 'Landmine Goes Click' is that its one of those rare films where the less you know going in, the better. The set up is that 3 American friends (a couple and their mutual best friend) are on a walking/climbing holiday in the beautiful and remote Georgian countryside. Things take a turn for the deadly when one of them accidentally steps on an old landmine, a leftover from the war that ravaged the country a few years ago. What happens from here is so full of twists and turns that to say any more would definitely spoil things so I will advise not reading much about the story (or watching the trailer) before watching. Needless to say the story goes off on brutal and twisted tangents throughout that definitely keep you interested. The direction, acting and cinematography are all solid, the real outbreak star being the gorgeous Georgian landscape. The film isn't perfect. Some scenes drag on a tad too long, and the pace dips a little in a couple of places. I also felt that it should have been 'nastier' but maybe thats just me. There is limited on-screen violence. Having said all this I do recommend the film to anyone prepared to try something different. It definitely makes you think as the credits start rolling. The film certainly doesn't go where you expect it to, and ultimately these days, thats high praise in itself.

6.5/10

I read all the reviews on here and thought, yeah, another stitch-up job where all the friends on production get together and post fake reviews. But I gave it a shot anyway and, guess what, this delivers and my assumption about fake reviews were blown out of the water. The movie maker, Levan Bakhla, is obviously inspired by the other great movie maker Michael Haneke and it reminded me of Funny Games, one of my favourite movies. Yes, the story can be improbable at times but that doesn't detract from the suspenseful way the director carries you along. It's not your usual revenge movie where the baddie gets his comeuppance, but it comes pretty close to it...with interest. I was totally held by the whole thing, especially in the last thirty minutes.Sterling Knight does a good acting job as Chris and is quite scary. Its ending will have you discussing with friends the outcome. All I can say is, well done, Levan Bakhla. You sure know how to direct a good movie.

PROS: To start off, the acting in what should've been a poor film, was in reality very well crafted. Each character was injected into the plot with so much finesse that you couldn't help but feel what they felt. The actors took on some deep, deep circumstances and they pulled them off phenomenally. All the scenes in the movie were so separate while staying just as significant to the central point. The idea of mini stories coming together to create one big one was creative and like no other. This made for an unconventional build up of tension, but it wan't bad. I liked the mini climaxes, and the character development that this set up created. But overall, I enjoyed the creative style of the progression of intensity and the acting which helped carry this dark film.

CONS: A simple thing that one could point out was then ending. I enjoyed the climax getting us to the resolution, I just didn't like the resolution itself. The reason for me not liking it was probably because it didn't enhance the movie for me. The requirements for a "technically" good ending is to clarify questions that help inform the watcher while simultaneously not taking away from the watchers overall viewing experience, to leave a lasting impression, and to enhance a point at which the film was trying to drive home; that can be anything from self preservation, blood must have blood, or even horror is fun. But this movie just missed the mark on a few key elements of a good hardy resolution.

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