Marked Men

What even is this movie supposed to be? The acting is unbelievably bad-genuinely hard to watch. Every performance feels like a high school drama class gone horribly wrong, and it made my skin crawl. Then there's the baffling use of dash cam footage, which looks like it was ripped from a 2007 YouTube vlog. What purpose does that even serve, besides making the whole thing feel cheap and disjointed?

Why is this man who looks 40 hooking up with someone who is clearly a teenager? It's uncomfortable. On top of that, all the characters are aggressively over-the-top while the main guy moves through every scene like he's just been lobotomized. There's no cohesion, no direction, and honestly, no reason this should have made it past the editing room.

Marked Men is a new romantic drama by Nick Cassavetes, director of The Notebook and The Other Woman. The film is based on the book written by Jay Cownover.

Shaw Landon (Sydney Taylor) has had his eye on Rule Archer (Chase Stokes) since they first met. Rule is just a more rebellious tattoo artist, who doesn't really seem to have time for a serious relationship, especially not with a more hearty girl like Shaw.

After a party and getting to know each other over a beer, they take on the challenge and try to start a relationship despite their opposites. The two now just have to learn how to maintain this relationship without changing or ruining each other.

The author of the book starts with a bit of a cliché direction with an "impossible" romance between a more innocent girl and a bad boy. Which makes for a mysterious relationship. THE adaptation of the book to this film is done appropriately, but remains more fun for connoisseurs and lovers of the book. For other viewers it remains more of a standard romantic drama that remains on the predictable side with the standard clichés.

Sydney Taylor and Chase Stokes play their roles faithfully to how they come across in the book, but as actors they lack a confirmed chemistry.

Super disappointed in the movies. I read the whole book series years ago and loved it so I was excited to see it was a movie. Should have read the reviews first. There are so many missed details from the book that make the story what it is. The characters of Rule and Shaw should have been matched to a T. They are nothing like the actual characters, physically or personality wise, like them in the book. Details about their lives were not correct. Events that didn't happen in the books were added into the movie. The whole storyline was just wrong. Passionflix needs to do a redo of this ASAP!!!!!

I can't believe this movie is directed by Nick Cassavetes, the legend that directed mastepieces like Alpha dog and The Notebook.

Then i've checked who wrote the script..the same person that wrote the lame scripts of After 3 and 4.

I have to be honest, the script is flat it has no big substance that's why the characters are weak, definitely not actor's fault (even if Inanna again with that meangirl attitude...please move on).

It is not a drama, not a romance so i'mo wondering what it is. The story don't flow well as should like there's no plot to follow and we jump from one thing to the other. I do not feel the family dynamics and i don't feel any development of the characters.

The themes in the book should be taken more seriously and I'm giving a 6 only because of the third part of the movie.

A praise to the one in charge of costumes.

I suppose it's my own fault but when I saw this I thought it might be a gangster thriller. Nope, it's about the on-off relationship between tattoo artist "Rule" (Chase Stokes) and his friend "Shaw" (Sydney Taylor). She used to date his brother "Remy" but we quickly learn that he was involved in a car accident with his brother and so now we have our requisite dose of family baggage to explain why "Rule" is a bit of a commitment-phobe. Meantime, she is supposed to be dating millionaire drip "Gabe" (Michael Bradway) to keep her rather wealthy but venal mother sweet, but in the end it's her bit of rough that she really craves. Can they sort things out and get past his fear of being called her boyfriend? There's the odd bit of sensitively photographed sex and it does pay slight homage to the artistry of some creative tattooists but for the most part it's a weakly constructed romantic will they/won't they drama that didn't really engage me at all. There is plenty of eye-candy on offer, including from the sparingly used, wooden as a picket fence, Alexander Ludwig as his elder brother "Rome" and Ella Balinska tries to inject a little bit of life into things as her best pal "Ayden" but neither Stokes nor Taylor do anything like enough with the, admittedly pedestrian, script or the story to bring this to life. Quite how it got a general release in the UK is, as Yul Brynner might have said, "a puzzlement ". It looks good and there are a few power ballads to help it along, but it's really just a mediocre television movie, sorry.