I must admit that I wasn't exactly harboring much of any high hopes or expectations to this 2020 action movie titled "Deceptive Intentions" as I sat down to watch it. First of all, I hadn't ever heard about it prior to sitting down to watch it. And secondly, the movie's cover and synopsis just didn't have top notch entertainment written all over it.
But I still opted to give "Deceptive Intentions" a fair chance.
Writer Kenya Hendricks put together a script that definitely had some potential to it, I will say that. However, director Robert L. Parker III just failed to cash in on that potential in a gratifying manner, because the movie was incredibly slow paced and just permeated low budget and homemade video all over it.
The acting performances were often amateurish and cringeworthy, though there were some of the actors and actresses that seemed to be knowing what they were doing. But the overall feel here was that this was more of a homemade film and not a proper movie.
Needless to say that I wasn't familiar with the cast ensemble in this movie.
Then there was the audio problems. In some scenes, and there were a handful of them, the audio was really low and you could barely hear the dialogue. Had it not been because of the option to put on English subtitles, then some scenes would have been totally lost in meaning, as the audio was so low.
And the sets, talk about homemade. Whatever was supposed to pass as an expensive restaurant was obviously just recorded in someone's living room. And the police detective office was plainly recorded in someone's garage. It just screamed low budget and amateurish production. And it was hard to take anything serious in those sets.
I will say that it definitely felt like the crew and performers wanted to make a proper movie and felt like they had all the right intentions and spirit. But the production of the movie was just an uphill obstacle holding the movie back.
My rating of "Deceptive Intentions" lands on a generous three out of ten stars.
