User reviews

Poor acting worse stunts.

Dire!

Michael Jai White wasted.

If u go into this movie with no expectations it's not bad. It's worth watching once. It's by far not the worst movie I've seen.

Oh my God how can film producers spend money on such rubbish.I stuck out the whole movie just to see if got worse ,and it did, the local Theatre group would have acted better than this lot,a big waste of time,stay well clear of this disaster!!

Dont waste your time. Low budget wannabe die hard film. And littered with movie mistakes.

No one going to ever confuse Sean Patrick Flanery with Bruce Willis. No ones going to confuse Weston Coppola with Alan Rickman. No one's going to confuse an abandoned hospital for operational Veterans Administration hospital. Even one in the economically depressed ass end of western upstate New York.

The premise that a four star Marine general would travel to the ass end of up state New York to see a psychiatrist is laughable.

Most of the characters are caricatures. They're not fleshed out in any shape or form.

The writing is cliched.

The special effects like gunshot wounds are atrocious.

If you can watch this for free on the internet and have some time that really needs killing, give it a shot. If you pay to watch this, you'll be pissed you wasted the money. I guarantee this.

The son of infamous B-Movie impresario Fred Olen Ray proves he's a chip off the old schlock with his boisterous DTV actioner 'Assault on VA-33'. Very similar to recent low budget JCVD shoot 'em up 'Kill Em All', with likeable action man Sean Patrick Flanery playing PTSD sufferer Jason Hill who has his therapy session royally fubar'd by the unexpected incursion of trigger-happy, hospital hijacking mercenaries, cartoonishly headed by the ponytailed 'Adrian', one of the more pleasingly 90s-styled Ruskie villains, a tailor-made role for maestro Billy Drago, but, sadly, the viewer will just have to make do with Weston Cage Coppola.

After Jason predictably goes full McClane, 'Assault on VA-33' proves itself to be a serviceable, if undeniably formulaic actioner, and while the conclusion is never really in doubt, ruggedly handsome, fleet-fisted Flanagan makes for a sympathetic pistol-packing patriarch, with charismatic action icons Michael Jai White and Mark Dacascos doing the best with their somewhat undernourished roles. While perhaps not the best in show, Christopher Rey's toothsome DTV shoot 'em up has enough mongrel charm for me to overlook its flaws. I really don't need every film to subtext me into dazed submission, just like the man said, if I wanted a message I'll listen to Marvin Gaye, sometimes I just like to watch noisome, lunkheaded, high test B-movies that energetically take my mind of the dismal day-to-day dross of modern life. 'Assault on VA-33' is nothing you 'aint seen before, and, sometimes, that's precisely what I need!'

The production quality is the highlight of the film as the acting is out and out the worst I've ever seen. There are also continuity problems with time of day and with the disappearing injuries of the lead during fight scenes. The actor who portrayed police chief and the second in command terrorist are particularly terrible in their amateur performances. I made it through the film just to see if it could get better, but it was the same all the way through. I wanted to like it, but the bad acting killed it.

This movie has to be critiqued in relation to the low budget.

It's a well paced escapade with obvious odes to big budget blockbusters in the action genre, but it would be whimsical & fastidious to compare this to such movies.

So Go in with expectations relative to the and you may actually enjoy the ride.

There're are some decent actors who have appeared in films such as John Wick that add to the played out narrative and whom help usher this movie along in a fair pace.

Realistic enough action sequences that avoid becoming laughably outlandish, the director and producers were aware of the limitations and didn't try to overcompensate, so sequences such as the helicopter being shot down and exploding are carried out with aplomb.

A predictable story line that is moved along at a fair pace as to not be a complete bore. Dodgy accents, arbitrary one-liners, and decent action. Just above Average B- action movie that is completely watchable until the end.

I know its pack with action stars flannery is a real BJJ black belt, Holden got old and hit the wall solid sad, Jai White decassco, Rob Van Damme..

But the movie is bad, and cheap, it really looks amateur and cheap don't even waste your time with this one not even worth a rental

How come this kind of movie still exists in 2021? The scenario, the actors, the action scenes, the FX, nothing can save this movie. The special effects (gunfire, flames coming out of guns, blood, etc.) are so awfully done I thought a 10 year old kid did this. Anyway, it is a terrible movie so don't waste your time watching it.

This B movie had the perfect formula to make a half decent generic action film. The story is the standard bad guys taking over a building with the good guy trapped inside. So what could go wrong?

Well first up the acting is so dodgy it is laughable. You could actually replace the actors with wooden dummies and the film would have been better for it. lol

Now the lead good guy is wasted until the latter half of the film until he man's up to start taking out the bad guys. At this point Bruce Willis had taken out a fair amount of them in Die Hard. But I guess this was done on a shoe string budget.

Some of the supporting cast were wasted in their roles like Michael Jai White playing a bumbling cop. Also Mark Dacasos as the sniper should have had a better role. He's always a decent supporting actor when he turns up in various roles. As for the lead, he was good but I'm sorry to see him in another cheap straight to dvd movie. Someone in Hollywood please give this guy a break!

All in all a standard generic action story that we have all seen before spoiled by terrible acting and pacing. I swear one of the hostages, a blond women had a grin on her face when the bad guys were pointing a gun at her. Woeful!

There is not a single saving grace in this film.

Script? Forget it.

Actors? Forget them.

Action? Forget it.

It's impossible to understand how this sort of c**p can ever get made, yet here it is.

If you watch this, heaven forbid that you paid money to do so, after reading this review then you deserve it!

It was pretty good kept me watching. Could have been a bit better as far as camara work though.

I usually don't write reviews but in this case I must say, the acting is absolutely horrible, the directing is very very bad. Yes, this is a low budget film but there is a plenty low budget films that are much better.

You can't excuse experienced producer and director Christopher Ray for such failure in directing his cast, or for his long dragged out shots and terrible camera work. I've seen first time filmmakers do a much better job in all areas of directing. I was actually expecting a young first attempt director, but sadly, no. How could he have approved such a bad final cut to go to distribution.

You can however, cut some slack for seasoned actor turned newb writer Scott Thomas Reynolds for the major plot holes in a story that isn't exactly original, but was still somewhat entertaining. I just wish some of the real obvious plot and technical issues would've been easily fixed; the nonsense band conversation in the van, then using a silencer, but never throughout the initial gunfire inside that hospital, that apparently everyone inside never heard. But the tween dialogue and cheesy humor in between major scenes where the main pitfalls in his writing. Then there was the normally comfortable 90 min runtime that felt longer and dragged out from the slow pacing and long dragged out and/or unnecessary scenes. I'm thinking this screenplay's story would've been better as a short, or at best a 1 hour TV movie, from lacking that much substance. But then again, for a newb writer with this film being only his second credit, he did good, because even screenwriters have to start somewhere, right?

Had Reynolds' script been directed properly, it wouldn't have felt as bad as it was. So the blame falls on the experienced director as to why this film was a flop. Even Sean Patrick Flanery (who just nailed it in Born a Champion) couldn't save this film. And why cast the awesome Michael Jai White and not have him do any arse kicking? The rest of the casting and performances were actually good and for the most part convincing, with the exception of Weston Cage Coppola as Adrian Rabikov. His performance seemed very amateurish - not that he's a seasoned actor, but I'm sure mostly from the lack of cast direction from Ray didn't that didn't help his overall performance. Even his very bad and laughable Russian or whatever that was accent made his character look simpy.

The cinematography was decent, and the score was surprisingly adequate for a B grade film, where it's usually loud, overbearing and unfitting. The editing (was there even any?) needed more cuts to the runtime by chopping down most of the scenes, and many scene transitions were sloppy. I'm guessing this was a low budget film due to the main set being a hospital under renovations, although it was used well.

Nevertheless, it's an ok film to watch if there's nothing better on, which nowadays there's only slim pickings. It's a generous 5/10 from me.

Poor acting and poor story line.. Don't bother with this one.