Tin Soldier

This film is one of those examples for film students on how one should Not utilize flash backs as a substitute for terrible script writing.

Be prepared for 90% horrible flash backs and it's not brilliant like Memento and feels like Demento.

It's hard to believe considering this director did great films like The Infiltrator.

This film is a horrible attempt at dealing with a sensitive subject like ptsd but mixed it with a silly Jones cult story that is lost in translation and unfortunately does a hatchet job in both execution and editing that it ends up turning into a tossed messed up salad that makes one wonder if the writer and director suffer also from ptsd.

What a sad waste of top talent of Deniro whose lame character 6 mins is not justified and Scott Eastwood ( who seems to have a knack for picking lemons - even though he tries his best in this silly film), and the funniest best razzie of the year award is Jamie Foxx - starring as a cross of Carrot Head meets 70s Shaft with the worst hair wig ever.

This film is a thankfully only 75 minute disaster that if one removes the top cast it is a B film that Steven Siegel would be perfect except I read somewhere the budget was $39m so maybe it was a huge payday for Deniro and Jamie Fox.

Watch with low expectations

3 stars.

This latest entry in the "geezer teaser" cinematic universe is surprisingly competent-and still totally skippable. Foxx and De Niro actually show up more than just for the poster (a rarity!), but most of the heavy lifting is done by Scott Eastwood, who's... fine. He doesn't embarrass himself, which already makes him an MVP in this genre even if he lacks gravitas.

Instead of going full action schlock, Tin Soldier tries to get deep and psychological, which is bold for a movie with such poor editing. Because the emphasis is on the story and on the human angle rather than on schlocky action, my standards for the writing and acting were lifted. Unfortunately, it's here that the film really fails to deliver. The body count is low, the trauma is high, and Jamie Foxx plays a cult leader so unconvincing you'd wonder how he even got people to follow him on TikTok, let alone into armed rebellion. Foxx is loud and aggressive, but he's not seductive or persuasive the way he would need to be as a cult leader.

There are some cool visuals-Eastwood's inner torment gets the psychedelic treatment-but the writing stumbles hard. The movie wants to be about healing and identity, but forgot to make any of that feel earned. Foxx yells vague anti-government stuff, Eastwood broods, and at no point do you believe these two were ever in the same cult.

The film could have worked if we saw Eastwood grappling with his allegiance to the cult, and if a proper parallel had been made between letting go of the rage and anger resulting from his trauma and symbolically represented by Foxx and the cult. Instead, Eastwood is in opposition to the cult from the film's start, and we never really see him being swayed by anything Foxx says or conflicted about what to do. The ending feels completely unearned.

Shoutout to the final showdown, where the movie ditches reality altogether and swan-dives into Mad Max cosplay. Foxx rallies his cloak-wearing cult at a dam that looks like a Bond villain's Airbnb, and suddenly we're in Thunderdome territory! Eastwood and Foxx brawl in a literal arena, surrounded by fireballs and chanting dudes like it's post-apocalyptic Fight Club. Oh, and Eastwood planted a bomb with a big ol' timer. I probably would have enjoyed the whole film more if it had maintained this level of insanity throughout. Sigh!

In the end, it's too serious to be fun, and too sloppy to be serious. If you're looking for meaningful drama or mindless action, you'll come away disappointed.

Lineup consisted or Jamie Foxx, Robert De Niro and John Leguizamo. Within the first ten minutes Rita Ora was hanging from the gateway. This is the moment I should have turned it off. The storyline was ok but the execution and cinematography were awful, at one point I was considering booking an appointment at Specsavers because the screen was blurred and shaking. Sadly Scott Eastman isn't his dad and blurred and shaky screen tried to make up for woeful acting and zero charisma. DeNiro is one of my favourite actors but this is a bit part for a pay day. My advice is to stay clear of this dreadful film.

A movie filled with a bunch of quazi-religious overtones with some sprinkled in semi-narcissistic half-baked para-bu(ll)shido made up sort-of-kinda japanese sounding titles/words and a whole slew of useless filters on top of slow-mo and a seemingly acid-tripping editor trying to bring his LSD-visions onto the screen between the dark scenes with blinking lights and WAY too many close-up shots jockeying back and forth between faces and people.

Story was bad and barely made sense, the actors were probably (?) doing their best and failing at it, leaving the result a mess of a movie, a waste of money and about an hour and 5 mins - as I FFWed several times to skip the most annoying scenes of grand-standing monologuing and preaching - of my life I'll never get back.

It had about NOTHING to do with PTSD besides mentioning it in passing and the best thing about this movie was the people behind the scenes that were paid to work on it. And I'm not counting the actors in front of the camera into the crew here.

It's not hard to make a bad film. But it's hard to get the money together to involve actors of this level in something like this.

It's possible that viewers might wonder if the financiers were seeking to exchange money of a certain type for money of another variety. I wouldn't want to conjecture about that.

It's not just the spend on the leads either, it doesn't look cheap for the most part. And there's some kind of ham-fisted attempt to deliver a message too. It's not for me to be offended by the take on combat PTSD that's being put before us here, although I can imagine others would be.

It really is awful though.