The Collective

This nonsense should be studied in film school on how to not make a film. A fifth grade drama class could write and direct a more entertaining film. It took two writers to come up with a story that's been done thousands of times before, and all much better. The story was so cliched, dull, generic, and predictable, and dragged out endlessly with horribly slow pacing and an uneventful narrative, that the normally comfortable runtime felt endless.

At the halfway mark, I felt like I spent half a day binging a boring TV series. Then you have director Tom DeNucci manage to make the very few action scenes boring and cringeworthy, and he clearly failed to direct his cast properly, especially Tyrese Gibson, who looked and sounded bored and like he was falling asleep. To call this nonsense a B-film is an insult to B-films. Whoever funded this mess clearly needed a tax write-off. Don't get drawn in by the few well-known cast, them being in this does zero to elevate this film, and I'm sure they're regretting it, no matter how big their paycheck was. It's a generous 3/10 all going to Don Johnson and Ben-Victor, the only two actors that held their own even with the terrible writing and directing they had to work with.

I wanted to like this film, I really did. Putting Lucas Till and Tyrese Gibson on screen together it could've been so good. But the script feels lazily written and the action sequences are awful. There is no intention and no proper camera framing, action scenes have to be framed so that you follow one central character, and the camera tracks him moving, the way it's done in John Wick or Accident Man.

Then also there is no pizazz it feels more like a CW TV show than a film and even they have you more engaged. Also lastly there is zero character development, like who is Sam, why should we like, we just see him fight, if you can call it that, the fight choreography was limited, and the stunt team came across like they were told to treat it like a Karate exam aka act like a dummy.

Also why isn't Tyrese Gibson hinted at you don't find out about him until you do, it's like suddenly he's there. Quite frankly the film just feels lazy, like someone was making a point or like a half done project for history class at high-school, about independent spy organisations.

I watched with a friend who worked on the crew and he paid. That's the best thing I can say about it. Lucas Till is about as intimidating as a ballet dancer. He's supposed to be some hot-shot killer - NOT! The story is poorly constructed and poorly written. The actors spit out words that are flat and uninspiring. The direction (this guy gets hired by people who must be clueless) is flat and poorly staged, even after doing their best to mimic MATRIX-like shooting scenes. Ruby Rose was not into it. Don Johnson must be in dire straights to work on these low budget films. The rest of the cast was equally bad - retreads from this Dinucci guy's other bad movies.

Investigating and bringing to justice human traffickers is a good idea for a plot. I am sure it would make a real good movie someday. Add to that a kind of "MI double-trouble rip off" hostage person has intel about out agents and we need to get him before others get him. OK, that could work too.

But.... it doesn't work in this mess of a movie. Its a yawn. That new gay MacGyver kid could have shined here, he does have a casual manner that could work. But...his "stealth" intro segment is so bad, he is stalking but crunching leaves and ground cover under every step as he approaches his target area. The baddies are 25 yards away, I guess that's the tragic-I mean magic of movies. He's a loud ninja against deaf henchmen. The combat knife bad-girl was the worst actress I've ever seen. There are a lot of tactical errors, hit squads approach in vans right up to the target house... with headlights on? This base of operations house has no surveillance? Of any kind? It's that important. Oh, boy.

Tonight, in truth, watched it to see just how bad it was, so I could write a review here. The thing that boggles the mind is the lineup of cast actors. Poorly used name talent here. Top grade actors are being put into these looser productions - there is a lot of them as of late! Don't understand the studio/production financing mindset that green lit these, Do they really think they will make any money in return??

The Collective...stupidity~? No, flat out stupidity.

I watch at least 4-5 Movies a week and have, most of the time done a review each time but this time I didn't watch the movie in its entirety and I most certainly wasn't going to bother with a review because I couldn't get further than about 35 minutes into the movie. I couldn't even give it a single star. From the start, the script, the acting was pretty poor the sound effects and stunt action was less than mediocre. The fact that there were a few big names wasn't enough to make it even worth my effort to watch more than I could stomach. I couldn't actually even say that I understood the whole premise of the Movie but I was not prepared to even try to understand it because what I did see had nothing to redeem it from anything but the "cutting room floor". The $8 million production cost and the $2 million cast + was IMO a total waste of someone's money. The movie is so bad I have to stop myself from continuing to review this Movie for fear of dying of old age before I finish.