Hopes were not high when deciding to watch 'Redemption'. The premise intrigued a little, though it did sound silly at the same time so it was clear to me that it was not a film to be taken too seriously. What made me hear of it and decide to watch it in the first place was when it appeared in the more like this section for another film (cannot remember which one, have seen and reviewed too many films recently and have had a lot going on).
Despite watching without any prejudice and without wanting or aiming to dislike it go from the get go, 'Redemption' badly failed on every level. Really did try to take it for what it was and what it was trying to be, but 'Redemption' just executed all its components poorly and completely detracted from getting anything from it. If enough of the components were executed halfway competently, this reviewer would have been more forgiving towards the film and would have found it easier to judge it on whether it succeeded or not in what it was trying to do. Couldn't do either.
'Redemption' is poorly made visually. With every aspect of the production values being drab to the point of dreariness and very poorly focused to the point of chaos. The sound is intrusive and obvious, which are two of the last things audio should be like really. The script completely lacks tautness and has a lot of unintentional humour that goes so overboard it becomes exhausting rather than entertaining.
Didn't detect much directing here, stylistically and visually 'Redemption' is a complete failure on this front and in terms of making the film dramatically compelling it fares abysmally on that front, one can't call it ill at ease, out of their depth or inexperienced because it feels more like non-tryer execution. The thrills are non-existent and it's just too predictable to be suspenseful, too dreary to be tense, too ridiculous to be unsettling and too personality-void to be fun, and that is when any kind of discernible story is obvious as the story is far too thin with many dull over-stretched stretches.
None of the characters are remotely interesting and are so one-note. Although Dustin Leighton tries his best, the cast consists of actors that clearly wanted to be somewhere else.
Summing up, a complete failure. 1/10
