The Profit

The acting, camera work, and lighting is simply deplorable.

I suppose the bad acting can also be blamed on the awful script, but it's just so all-around ridiculous it's difficult to lay fault on any one specific.

Supposedly "stopped" by Scientologists because they thought it was a slimly disguised L. Ron Hubbard biography, I'm also beginning to doubt that. Without that hype, this thing would never have seen the light of day anyway.

Don't waste your time, seriously.

This film could have been a triumph of art and satire. As it stands, it's definitely worth seeing (if you can get your hands on it).

Filming was shut down by Scientologist protesters a week before shooting was scheduled to end and the film has been tied up in litigation in the US ever since. The pity of the situation is that the A-list crewmembers couldn't cross the protest line because it was made up of striking union members. This meant that the production values dropped considerably and in the shots that made it into the film from that period of shooting it is obvious that it is not the same crew.

However, the movie is still a fun journey through one man's life of deceit. The acting is commendable but the standout aspect is definitely the cinematography. It's shot like a comic book, using colors to parallel the characters' journeys and accentuate the contrasts between the on-screen personalities. I could almost watch the movie with the sound off just enjoy the overall look. I strongly encourage anybody who enjoys visual style to see this film. It's also nice that this film isn't liked by scientologists and by seeing it one can thumb one's nose at their attempts to shut down free speech. :)

This fascinating legend of a man, Leeland Conrad Powers, mad with a want of freedom, who imprisons himself in a string of faulty lies; depleting his sense of stability and spiraling him, thoroughly, into madness and obsession is well worth watching. Intense, loosely edited, but nonetheless compelling, direct and honest tale of how Satanism mixed with psychotherapeutic hypotheses based in hypnosis can, theoretically, lead to a cult of Charles Manson Family proportions and eventually a religion like Judaism, or Scientology. No offense intended, just examples.

Powers' followers are hypnotized into believing that all physical phenomenae are just processes of the mind, and not actually occurring. They avoid psychology and hypnosis ideas, and those in-the-know about them, because they are the basis of SciMIND, Powers' name for his process, and would easily discredit him as a quack, brainwashing people. The main tenet of Scientific Spiritualism, the religion, is that followers give it money... though they are a nonprofit organization.

Ironically, Powers' madness leads him to believe his own ball of hooey, and he takes himself to be a true prophet of God, though he started it all to escape the fate of imprisonment.

This is well worth watching. And, because the movie's distributor is not allowed to profit from sales in the United States, I think that you can make as many copies as you want in that country and give them away for free.

"The Profit" is the fascinating biography of a con artist who later founds his own cult, that later sets up itself as a religion. Sure, he has some problems from time to time (IRS, FBI, etc) but he is successful, i.e. he makes tons of money and brainwashes many people around the world. The concept used was the one used in "Citizen Kane", i.e. it starts with the cult leader dying and his life span of several decades is presented.

This is the worst movie I've ever seen. The story isn't interesting, the cinematography sucks, the acting is plainly bad, and it's just all terribly bad. Please do not see this movie.