Rogue Elements: A Ryan Drake Story

This 'proof of concept' short film/pilot is a bit of a mess.

First up, the dialogue is bad, and the pacing is inconsistent. The music choices and editing adds no subtlety or tension as it is too bombastic, calling attention to itself. The acting varies between formulaic and atrocious. There are some interesting shots, peppered amongst the majority of generic ones. The story is not that gripping, and the lead role has been miscast, with an actor whose varying accent is his most interesting characteristic.

This is a film based on books by, and co-written by a YouTuber of some renown, Will Jordan, a.k.a. The Critical Drinker, so I was surprised and disappointed at the cliche level of dialogue and plot, given his reviews of movies, and his series of videos "the Drinker fixes". Although a lot of the responsibility for these things must also lie with the Director/Co-writer/Editor Travis Grant, as those three roles also play a pivotal part of how a film is made. While some of the fight scenes are okay, most of the pacing is slow, and the blocking/staging boring. More tension could have been added by giving characters things to do, putting them in motion as they speak the exposition necessary to set up the world this story takes place. Things like have the character who is supposed to speak Russian/Estonian actually speak Russian or Estonian to the guards, and not badly accented English. But mainly establish the main character earlier, as well as make him the one the audience wants to watch.

This 40 minute film had a budget of over $300,000, and many clever, inventive, independent feature films have been made for this level of money or less like Clerks, Open Water, Once, Pi, She's Gotta Have It, The Blair Witch Project, Paranormal Activity, and one of my favourites - El Mariachi, which had action and gun play.

I found this effort disappointing, and a missed opportunity with a budget not well spent.

Overall it was an enjoyable watch if you like fight scenes. It is not a complete story and if you haven't read the books you might be lost. Except for the Ryan character, most of the acting was not up to snuff. Some of the dialogue was stilted and cheesy. Overall this feels like a bunch of guys wanted to make a fighting and shooting short and here's nothing wrong with that! TBH I guess I had the expectation of an actual complete story seeing how it is the Drinker. But that's my fault. My expectations were subverted. The cinematography, coloring, and music are really good. The sound design was mostly good. The music mix was too loud and some of the atmosphere foley was wonky and amateurish. All of the gun sounds and fight sound design were great. The after credit scene with the Drinker at the end was hilarious (probably my favorite scene in the film) but it was totally out of place for the feel of the piece. I hope the Drinker gets a chance to make a full film with a complete story that has character development, arcs, etc. Would love to see what he can do if he gets a say in what shows up on screen. 40 min plus is plenty of time to accomplish this BTW. There are plenty of short films that feel like a complete narrative that are half the length of this film.

I'm a big fan of the Drinker as a critic. I could never really get into his writing as much, and this concept piece illustrates why for me.

Don't misunderstand to title, there's some fun to be had with some of the scenes, but the writing did not lend itself well to the direction it received, which resulted in a disconnect with any emotional investment the audience could have.

For all his talk, Will is not quite able to edit his dialogue down to something tight and concise. It's clear that he knows the story he wants to tell, simple and clear. Simple, indeed it is, but the word count that ended up on the paper did not reflect that.

For all the hullabaloo and self congratulatory behaviour surrounded this 'tv concept' thing, it was surprisingly dull affair.

Just a bland, generic special forces mission type thing that helps congest the daytime rota of those strange TV channels that constantly play low budget, low quality tripe.

It makes the Equaliser TV show with that ex rapper look almost like Shakespeare and let's be honest it's not a patch of the original show. I will be surprised if this ever makes it into anything else, be it on TV or the big screen. I believe that there is a series of books with the Nick Drake character, but honestly, I think I could pretty much have a good idea of all the plots going by this.

I like the critical drinker and enjoy his reviews but this movie just goes to show that it's much easier to review movies than it is to create them.

The movie was very amateurish, not just due to the budget. The writing, acting, sound. All of it was like a student film and a bad one at that. Talented film makers can hide the budget but when I came here and saw the budget for this film I was actually surprised they had so much.

The worst part of this film though is that it is just incredibly boring. Everything you see you've seen a million times before (in the 80s) and done much better. I cringed at the dialogue many times, it was cheese on steroids.

There are plenty of short films on YouTube that are far more interesting and unique and fun. It might have been a better ideato have condensed it all into a ten minute short. I don't think this would have made the movie better but at least fans of critical drinker who are curious to see this wouldn't waste as much of their time on this Earth watching this.

Anyway, if you can't do - teach. If you can't make movies - review them.

I was originally planning on giving this 4 stars but that was when I thought they were working with a miniscule budget of about 20k tops. After seeing how much was spent I've knocked it down to 2 stars and that's being generous. If you're a fan of critical drinker I'd recommend avoiding this movie because it is going to be hard to watch his reviews and take his opinion seriously moving forward after seeing what he personally produces.