Stranded

I have seen TV commercials with better actors! This is another movie I couldn't sit through. Between the paper thin actors and their badly timed attempts at dialogue, and scenes like Tom Berenger sitting at a judge's bench - obviously without a live audience, they show the cheapness of this film and guarantees that it definitely didn't go over-budget (undoubtedly a tiny one). We all get old, but Eric Roberts' choppers sound like they just came out of a glass, and Tom Berenger looks like he's ready to explode. The score was also cheap, and reminded me of 1970s TV. The director chose some shots that make me think he has about as much experience at this as a teenager directing an 8mm school project. Why either Tom Berenger OR Eric Roberts would ever choose to be in something this lame is beyond me. My theory is they owed one of their kids a favor and pulled a Ricky Ricardo. I give what I saw 2 stars, and that's being generous.

I love Western Movies..The story is very nice, the actors did a good job.

The sepia-toned intro didn't bother me so much, I guess, but the gunfight did drag on. I guess that was supposed to be the OK Corral shootout?

Why dwell on such little points? Because they're portents of doom.

I got about 10-15 minutes into the film before giving up. It attempts to set the plot through dialogue that's badly written and has the characters carefully explaining the back story to each other. Ashley whoosis (Elizabeth) has a heart-sinking line early on, when she is asked if "Jack made it up from Texas"...she replies, in her best Valley Girl imitation, "He did, actually." Yessir, it's 1882.

Then there's Joseph, who declares in a conversation with Elizabeth that he "doesn't believe in firearms." But when we see a full-length shot of him in the kitchen a moment later in movie time, he's wearing a revolver on his hip. And another few minutes later, after the trio finds a wounded Indian, Joseph the humanitarian is arguing that they should leave him to die.

Back in the '40s, James Thurber wrote a short story satirizing the Erskine Caldwell/Tennessee Williams literary style and themes. It consists of 4-5 pages of dialogue (in dialect) among a Southern cracker family; suddenly Thurber breaks it off and ends the story by saying, "If you continue writing for a few more pages, you have a screenplay." Well, it doesn't always work. Continue this script and you still don't have a watchable "B" Western.

Odd why this movie was released with the title "Doc Holliday's Revenge" if it is actually titled "Stranded". Regardless, I stumbled upon a copy of the movie with the title "Doc Holliday's Revenge", and opted to sit down and watch it, on account of it being a movie that I had never seen, much less even heard about.

Writer Rolfe Kanefsky put together a script and storyline that proved to be rather anti-climatic and it was somewhat of a struggle to actually sit through the ordeal. The narrative was just too simplistic and lacked entertaining elements. It felt sluggish and amateurish. And I have to say that I was definitely not impressed with what I sat through here.

A lot of the dialogue in the movie was pretty atrocious to listen to, especially since it was so forced and staggering. At times I felt like the dialogue must have been conceived by a middle-schooler.

The cast ensemble in the movie was small, and the actors and actresses didn't really have much to work with in terms of narrative, characters and dialogue. So they were fighting an uphill battle to stay afloat. I was only familiar with William McNamara, Eric Roberts and Tom Berenger. And I have to say that I don't understand why they shot all of Tom Berenger's scenes and dialogue the way they did; it was just laughably bad and a struggle to sit through.

Perhaps diehard Western fans can find something to be worked up about here, maybe the fact that it was dealing with the aftermath of the Earp shooting, who knows? But for a casual viewer, and one that is not overly much a fan of Western movies, then "Doc Holliday's Revenge" was not an impressive movie.

My rating of director David DeCoteau's 2014 movie "Doc Holliday's Revenge" lands on a three out of ten stars.

I will say just a few things: 1) I would watch it again ... as part of an endurance challenge ... maybe.

2) I would suggest that anyone watching this film go in with the understanding that you will stay sane by pretending this is a western comedy.

3) My wife would not, rather could not endure the film and my continuing to watch it and laugh out loud woke her up multiple times.

4) Having to expend the energy to drive this movie back to the Redbox was excruciatingly difficult.

If you are looking for something to make fun of for an evening, or a lesson in the legal foundation of the revenge taken by Doc Holliday, I can recommend this movie. I could also recommend Wizards of the Lost Kingdom II for the first point, but unfortunately not for the second.