Johnny Virus

This is basically a six-character play that takes place on two sets and one location. As others have said, it has a bad case of "Sin City" envy. I don't mind the lack of originality so much, but it's just plain boring. The interrogation/torture scenes have no intensity and the final scenes wherein everything is resolved have no tension. The title character basically has nothing to do in the movie. (It's as if Shakespeare had named his play about the prince of Denmark, "Guildenstern.") Also, while I can appreciate that times are tough, independent film-makers really need to get away from using animated (I won't even dignify them by calling them CGI) gunshots. The only thing that was lacking was a big "BAM!" in block letters, like in the Batman TV series. If you don't have the money to actually fire a gun on camera, don't bother. Definitely not worth your while. (And why the hell is he called "Johnny Virus"? That makes no sense whatsoever.)

It took me some time to engage enough to work out which of the performers was indeed the eponymous character, by the time I had however the lack of tension or purpose in any of the scenes made me want to eat my own shoes rather than watch anymore. The "gangsters" were about as terrifying as a muzzled and sedated Chiwawa and the plot dull and eye gougingly predictable enough to be a passable stand in for any bureaucrat. There seemed to me to be an awful lot of scenes where people were just standing about waiting for something to happen which invariably was not worth the wait.

This film is attempting to prop up the Sin City, graphic novel, genre with the same type of voice-over, style of dress, use of shadows and four swear words per line of dialogue etc. but it falls some way short. I'm also wondering if this film is sponsored by some tobacco manufacturer as all the characters seem to be smoking all the time.

The obviously small budget is a mitigating factor and if the whole film had been like the title sequence it could have been quite good but I'd still classify this film as Ed Wood poor without the kitsch value.