Backtrace

If you don't have anything else to do this may be an option. Gunshot scenes were weird, guys missing dozens of shots, pretty generic. What was that Sykes character all about?There were few scenes with him and most of them are irrelevant or without depth. Actually if I look to all the other characters, there's no depth, nothing. Oh, and the end of the movie was also pretty generic, I've seen some people that said the ending was good, really??

What a terrible movie but for Sly Stalone to appear in this muck and other A list actors doing similar belies the, "It's all about the art" argument actors spout. In a world where A list actors are doing TV advertisements, heretofore work that was left for actors who had a bad time making a living from acting, proves to me "It's all about the money" and these A list actors are part of the GAA, Grab All Association, in other words they will do anything for money and to hell with the art.

So at the store last week and along with getting Avengers Endgame on Blu Ray I noticed a pretty new action/thriller with Sylvester Stallone and Matthew Modine called Backtrace. But you know something is wrong when the film is less than a year old and the Blu Ray is already in the bargain bin. The film is just a very boring mess that run 82 minutes (without credits) and still could have been at least 20 minutes shorter.

The plot has a thief (Matthew Modine) and a few other criminals getting shot down by their partners. Modine survives but looses his memory. Seven years later 3 people break him out of a high security facility and put experimental drugs in him. Most of the film is watching Modine have painful flashbacks and looking for bags of money. We get some scenes of Stallone in random cop exposition scenes. But most of the film is just boring scenes of them looking for bags of money. Very little happens in the film. There is two shootout scenes but nothing that exciting. The whole film lacks in every department especially in character development. This is Stallones worst work.

I get that amateur writers need to start somewhere, but writer Mike Maples needed to partner up with a seasoned screenwriter for his 2nd-ever film - especially when casting big names, instead of putting Stallone and Modine thru this garbage. The premise of this story did have a chance, but the writing killed it, and very disappointingly so, to say the least.

Some scenes where outrageously ridiculous and riddled with plot issues. Even some of the dialogue seemed to be written by a 5th grader. I feel bad for Stallone and Modine, I hope they got paid well, as this will not show well on their resumes.

Then there was that constant overbearing and out of place annoying score... who agreed to that? Had the score been more appropriate (and not so loud and more absent), the film would have showed much better.

The directing was also nothing to write home about; the camera work was OK in most of the film, but the shaky migraines and some pan shots and zooms were annoying, but I guess director Brian Miller could only do so much with the screenplay he was handed. I also feel he could've directed his cast better, and edited/cut many of the flaws this film had.

A very generous 6/10 from me, mainly for the story's premise, and because Stallone and Modine carried this film from being a total flop.

I lasted 47 mins, there's only so much a grown man can take 😢