Los olvidados

What drew me into seeing 'The Good, The Bad and the Dead' in the first place? The reasonably likeable cast, a potentially intriguing story and that it was part of my low budget completest quest and popped up in my recommended for you section. Was also a bit apprehensive, with a less than favourable rating and generally reviews that were lukewarm at best and most being very negative.

'The Good, The Bad and the Dead', when checking it out, certainly could have been much worse. There are definitely worse films about, of the genre and overall. Is it a good film let alone a great one? Not even close. Did it use its potential? No. Is it that bad? Not quite. Does it has redeeming qualities? Yes, but not many. To me, while having learnt not to trust ratings and not worry about going against the grain (though am in the minority here who respects critics opinions and tend to be on the same, or slightly above or below, page as them), the rating is about right and do have to agree with the criticisms here. This is coming from someone who did want to sort of like it.

Johnny Messner and Dolph Lundgren fare quite well and give charisma and engagement. Messner gives the better performance of the two and by far and large the best thing about 'The Good, The Bad and the Dead'.

Some of the story intrigued, with a very promising beginning, and the music while not the most memorable is at least listenable.

Unfortunately, Danny Trejo cannot save it in a role that should have been perfect for him and over-compensates from start to finish of his screen time. Natassia Malfe is just weird and not in a good way. None of the characters are developed enough and are very difficult to get behind, in a film with far too many and some not necessary to the story. 'The Good, The Bad and The Dead' looks cheap, especially the badly organised and sometimes incomprehensible editing. The action is both dull and chaotic, there is nothing exciting and it's choreographed with no enthusiasm or finesse.

The script is too talky and has no tautness, the pace is flabby and the story gets far too complicated, again from trying to do too much, with any twist attempts being extremely predictable. The direction seemed indicative of lack of experience or ease.

Overall, not horrendous but severely lacking in many areas. 3/10 Bethany Cox

For the first five minutes the movie, which thinks it has clever title, it might look decent with cool visual and noir vibe, then it literally falls apart with every following scenes. The plot makes little sense, the acting consist of the males trying to be as comically macho as possible while the ladies seem like they're auditioning for porn intro. The action is on another league of laughably bad with abundance of cheap and silly effects.

Story follows many different characters, who the movie introduces with amateur imitation of Tarantino style. The multi-perspective immediately falters with poor logic and overly convenient melodramatic subplots. One scene has Danny Trejo performing dramatic monologue like he's in telenovela. It tries to string together several agendas with climatic twist only to end up with severe inconsistency.

Normally, I wouldn't nitpick much about acting, but it has one of the most absurd performances even on B-movie standard. Natassia Malthe as Christine is utterly bizarre. It's like she's under the influence of anesthetic or laughing gas from dentist and trying to resist the effect during filming. Her expressions are forced and just unnaturally disrupting on almost every scenes she's in.

Most of the men are rough agents or rougher antagonists. Danny Trejo alone should suffice for gruff character, but here everyone grunt, swear and try to look humorously manly as though they are on Marlboro commercial. The ladies are painfully over acted. It doesn't matter who the character is, every girl winks or flirts, sometimes directly to the camera. I'm surprised they didn't just suck lollipop and moan instead of delivering their lines.

Action is all kinds of bad. It makes mid-tier Bollywood movies look like Oscar material for choreography. Punches and kicks miss while baddies fly across the room. Everyone is trigger happy, literally shooting anyone without little to no provocation, but they lack the self-preservation instinct to take cover. Then we have the crappy slow-mo with flare effect painted on the gun. It's mesmerizingly bad.

If there's any shining light on this black mess, it's that Johnny Messner as the lead Brian is not bad. He brings effort for his character and he would've been a more decent lead if given the right material. Dolph Lundgren is also pretty good, most of the revelation hinges on him and he did try. Still, the problem with original material persists, they just seems underutilized here.

There are a lot flaws, either in writing or choreography, yet the movie pretends they don't exist and continue to play western music or some macho gibberish. It honestly looks like spoof of action, but I fear it actually tries to be gritty. In that case, one should still view it as parody for more amusement or simply forget it entirely.

Ambitious C-movie, which, thanks to a passable look, shoots close to the B category in a crisp 85 minutes.

As expected, the many familiar faces serve every known cliché, which can probably be considered fan service in this sector. Many, perhaps a few too many characters, to bundle a common material from so many threads may be successful for the idols Tarantino and Ritchie, but not for Mr. Woodward. Where else do they steal? Score ala Desperado, shootouts in the spirit of John Woo. But why not, "it does what it's supposed to do".

In most rankings, 4Got10 gets a 4 out 10, with a good mood at the viewing, it could be a 5.

Even the good actors (which is why i tried to watch it) are so bad i almost cried. First few minutes looks good, the rest is just horrible and pain to watch. Didnt make it to the end. Had to delete it asap

The story, the interiors and the fighting will remind you of something you have already seen or of a bad TV movie.

The acting sometimes is really unconvincing (dialogue too) but there is something in this film that you would never expect: when Michael Paré (the Sheriff) or Dolph Lundgren are on, the movie for a moment starts to work as if it were a normal, enjoyable flick!

It doesn't last long, the two of them could not save the film. But this was something I didn't expect from Ivan Drago and I'm more than glad to have it witnessed and to pay my respects to him with this note.

The film, besides that, was too boring...