buckcash

I had high hopes for this movie, especially given the glowing review by a previous reviewer, and perhaps I went into it with my expectations too high because of that.

My impression as I watched was that it had beautiful scenery, terrific sets, locations, props and actors. Visually, it was quite fantastic in an eye-candy sort of way. I thought the camera work and lighting were quite nicely done.

But the acting, to me, was not beautiful at all. From my point of view, it was quite stilted, stiff, dialogue delivered as if read from cue cards by students of over-clear enunciation school. It just didn't come off as natural to me, and kept me from immersing myself in the story, unfortunately.

When one actor's work in a film comes off as unconvincing or amateurish, I put the blame on that actor. But when it's a problem with all or nearly all of the actors in a film, I put the blame on the director, and that's the case here.

The story itself was mediocre, standard-fare good-cop-surrounded-by-bad- elements stuff, with no real surprises or notable twists to speak of, unless you're very new to the genre, which I'm not.

In the end, it's nothing I'd care to see again and, knowing what I know now, had I missed it, that would have been okay too.

The story had potential, but that potential was knifed, shot and strangled to death almost as soon as it started, and was certainly dead by the time the credits rolled.

The acting in particular, especially by the lead, was SO bad, I could hardly stand to keep watching. It was like every word out of his mouth was being read for the first time off a cue card, after spending his entire life in over-enunciation school. It was as far from natural and believable as any dialogue I've ever heard in a movie, and kept me from being able to stay engaged in the story. With every word, I was ripped from a suspension of disbelief and slapped in the face again and again with the fact of completely contrived it was.

And that stilted dialogue doomed the script itself to coming off as completely contrived as well.

The over-enthusiastic review with all the stars just has to be by someone who was involved in this horrible production. "Bad taste" just doesn't even come close to covering it as a reason.

My advice is to skip this dog, and go see a high school play instead, which would be much more entertaining.

This had a fairly interesting story line that could have been really fun and entertaining.

Unfortunately, the acting was so wooden and so unbelievable that I couldn't stay in the story long enough to enjoy it.

On top of that, the sound mix was ridiculously bad. Specifically, the background music and ambient sound was mixed too high and drowned out much of the dialogue. On top of that, much of the background music just didn't seem to fit the scenes it was placed in.

In the end, it was painful to continue watching all the way to the end, but I stuck with it in the hopes of getting some kind of closure on the time I'd already put into it. It was a hope unrealized.

If I could go back knowing what I know now, I'd have skipped this dog.