Swelter

I bought this film only because it was a mix up between western and crime movie, and also because there was JCVD in a supporting character. Besides this, as we say in french, this feature doesn't break three legs to a duck. Nothing exceptional in this forgettable movie. I did appreciate the wink to THE WILD BUNCH; the sheriff's name is Pike Bishop. I watched Sam Peckinpah's masterpiece at least a dozen times in my life, and Pike Bishop sounds quite familiar to my ears.

It's a new wave crime film, in the line of Quentin Tarantino's world, as we watch since the early nineties now.

An acceptable time waster, no more, just for rent, and certainly not for buying.

Back in the day, a movie starring Jean-Claude Van Damme was an action flick with lots of martial arts. He was the good guy in it. And it actually starred Van Damme.

More recently, Van Damme has made some movies with him as a flawed protagonist, and then several more as the main bad guy.

This movie is a decent Drama/Suspense film, with Van Damme as a secondary character, and a tries-to-be-good bad guy. He is just above the "character actor" role, probably in my mind only because he is JCVD.

The bad guys here go looking for the guy who barely escaped and still has the money, after some hold-up years ago where everyone else goes to prison to stew and fester about their revenge. There are enough variations on this basic idea to keep the viewer interested. Lennie James does a good job as the town Sheriff, easy going, hard to ruffle, and who you somehow know you just don't want to mess with. There is actually a little action here and there, but it is realistic (no martial arts) and serves mostly to add to the suspense.

With no JCVD, this would be a movie worth a watch. An interesting plot, with good acting, and nice cinematography. Seeing JCVD do his "actual acting" thing is also fairly enjoyable. He manages to entertain with his french (Belgian) accent and a simmering manner that seems to add depth even to a character that has little.

Saw this movie on sale for 50 cents and said hey can't go wrong right? It made sense after watching why it was so cheap but overall the movie wasn't worst thing I ever seen.

First of all this is not big budget movie at all. Its very easy to tell immediately from the shaky camera work to the poor action shots. But it does what it can with all that in mind.

The movie starts painfully slow and feels extremely dragged out. However the last 20 minutes or so I have to say were pretty good and lot things happen.

Another issue I had with this movie without giving too much away is some events that transpire in the movie are utterly confusing and you'll notice yourself scratching your head several times. Its shame because I think they tried to do this to give it twist and turn aspect but this style of movie it just doesn't work good for.

I wouldn't recommend this movie for teenage to young adult demographic they'll hate it with passion. But for the dad/older men generation might find it somewhat enjoyable.

The good: The cinematography is really nice (except for a view hiccups).

The bad: Jean-Claude Van Damme does not so bad as usual (isn't much in the movie)

The ugly: Characters and story The whole movie doesn't make any sense - not even a little bit. I don't wanna spoil for the brave that sit trough the movie - but its bad, really bad.

In this movie you will see characters (yes I mean plural) that have no soul, are cliché, unbelievable and really stupid.

And if I say stupid I really mean it - almost nobody of the main characters would live that long if they where like this forever (but the movie didn't mention a chemical plant accident where everybody got insane - so ...)

For me it's always surprising to see that really bad scipts are getting money (and we talk about millions) - where clearly no money can't be made. OK yes Tarantino or Robert Rodriguez could make this film work (but hey they would cast the right actors and give them some crazy lines to work with)

Having seen the trailer, I gave this film a shot. In the beginning, I wasn't disappointed. The first few scenes were quite good, obviously imitating the cool atmosphere of films by Tarantino and Rodriguez. This lasted only for the first 10 minutes though.

The rest of the film dragged on to include family drama, ridiculous array of stand-offs and completely illogical character decisions. The actors could have probably managed a more believable performance, since the cast was decent, but they had nothing to work with. The initially cool and skilled outlaws break down into randomly psychotic, calm, honourable, greedy, sadistic or thoughtful, at the drop of a hat, from one scene to another.

I cannot recommend this film. It is a forgettable mess, which after the first few scenes, didn't even seem to try to be anything else.