The Channel

In New Orleans, two brothers and their military brothers form a bank robbery crew. They use their military skills to the fullest, but they are surprised by the unexpected arrival of a SWAT team. The FBI is leading the charge as the city is on high alert for the surviving crew members. Ava is their inside woman at the bank. They are lifelong companions from the Irish Channel neighborhood of New Orleans.

There are some good action sequences. The opening bank robbery is good. There is a great section where they are captured by a black crime lord. The rest is a bit of a struggle. The robbery crew does a passable job at being hard. The opening joke reminds me of the inappropriate humor from Predator. The action reminds me of the kinetic energy of Heat. It's obvious that this film is pulling inspiration from some of the best action thrillers around. Problem is that it's beyond their abilities. I would really cut back on the cops in this cops and robbers drama. The actors and filmmaker do struggle at times outside of the bloody gun violence.

A fun, shoestring-budget type, heist movie that borrows heavily from superior films in the genre. Namely and obviously the 199x movie "Heat". It's almost like the writers of this movie just finished Breaking Bad and then watched Heat directly preceding receiving the inspiration for writing this film. All that said, you could do worse than Breaking Bad and Heat for touchstones imo. The acting is not great (especially from the dude who played the good bro and the dude who played Pacino's cop character) and some of the lines are just awful but I found it enjoyable. Lots of gunfights and sincere but laughably terrible attempts at N'Orlins accents. I have definitely seen worse.

I like heist movies like Den of Thieves, so I turned this one on. The movie's main characteristic is the absence of anything groundbreaking, fresh, and original. The movie seemingly borrows from an assortment of heist movies, including Den of Thieves. The result is that the movie is predictable and forgettable. The ending is a bit of a mixed bag, relying on some mildly incredulous actions by the police

Nonetheless, I still found the movie to be a very easy and fun watch. The action scenes are intense; the police investigation is delivered intelligently for most of the movie (outside of the ending). The character Mick is awesome and definitely overshadows his nicer brother. The pacing is smooth.

Again - the movie won't stay with you, and there isn't much you haven't seen. But if you like heist movies, crime movies, cop movies, and action movies - you'll have no trouble sitting through this one

7.5/10.

Action movie fanatics may wanna take a look at Kaufman's work, he started in 2005 with a very low budget flick The Prodigy (200 000 bucks), a dark and gloomy story about a sadistic masked killer. A must watch. The mold for all his other movies.

The way he handles the shoutouts is quite specific, a mixture of quick cuts, and immersive shots, gore wounds, and intense sound design, and believe me it works and it's very enjoyable. It gives a unique and aggressive style to the fight scenes and it shows.

He then continued to direct and write action flicks, using his skills learned in the industry to make good stuffs despite having a limited budget. But he brings back all the old faces you wanna see, Lundgren, Cuba, Berenger, Prochnow,Mandylor,Strong, Coates etc... . I recommend all his movies.

The Channel is no exception and it still got the spirit, good pacing, good acting, immersive music, intense shootout scenes and sound design, you can tell they liked the other good heist movies, there are some references and nod to Heat, Reservoir Dogs and Point Break. No lecturing, no politics, just true Cinema.

I'm curious to see his next movie wich will be released in a 3 days : Shrapnel.

Never mind the clearly bogus high reviews, and this film is certainly more deserving than the 1/10's, so here's an honest real review; it's a decent and one-time watchable B-Film. The story is nothing new, but has a nice flow and continuity to it, with very little plot and technical issues, and decent action. The 100 min runtime could've used a 10-15 min trim to get rid of some of the filler. Pacing was decent, as was the cinematography and score, especially for a B film. I've never heard of any of the actors, but they performed fairly decent, although the Walter White looking guy and the lead FBI agent Nicoye Banks could've had better casting choices. Nevertheless, it's no 10 and certainly not a 1, but a fair 7/10 for one of the better watchable B films I've seen in a while.