When it comes to reviewing and voting on small budget movies, I tend to be more generous with my views than if I was dealing with a big budget movie. After all, a big studio production has the cash to make sure they get everything right but a small production rarely has that privilege. For example, a lot of the violence in this movie happens just out of shot. Weapon impacts are just out of frame and then we see the aftermath. This I don't have a problem with as it's hard to do lots of fake impacts realistically and safely. So putting it just out of view makes sense. But despite all the limitations of the budget it is clear that there is still some other problems with this film. The biggest of which is the comedy. The script does contain some decent jokes and one liners but due to some really bad editing and directing - and in one or two cases, some bad performances - most of the humour is completely butchered. If the joke isn't entirely delivered in one take then the editing room is where the timing can be refined until the humour works. But that clearly hasn't been the case in the making of this film. Instead the editing has tried it's best to squeeze every moment of hilarity out of each even vaguely amusing moment and such an attempt kills the humour dead. Several times while watching this film I could see that a joke would have looked great in the script but due to the performances and post production work, the joke just doesn't work on film. But to the fair to the editor and directors, some of the jokes in this film are also ruined by bad performances. There is at least one major cast member who gives a performance worthy of a school nativity play and at least one other who comes close. Which is a shame because some of the other actors and actresses are really good. They've just been let down by some of their cast mates and poor post production work.
If you're looking for a funny comedy, don't see this film. If you're looking for violence, don't see this film. If you're looking for gore or are interested in how *not* to edit humour or like films where afterwards you can say "damn, if they'd had a bigger budget...", then see this film.
