American Dream

When you start throwing names around in the film's trailer - Janusz Kaminski, award winning long time cinematographer to Steven Spielberg, you expect to see something, well... worth watching. This was not the case here.

Kaminski, as producer and director for this film, was horrible as a director. Way too many random still shots, unnecessarily long or too short scenes, and scenes popping out of nowhere and ending abruptly as well as outdated slow-mo shots. The editing was just as bad. Seasoned cinematographer Keith Dunkerley's photography was the worst I've seen in a long time, and perhaps Kaminski should have stuck to what he's good at. The washed out yellow tinge colors made the film feel like it was the late 80's or early 90's - very unappealing and not gangster motif. It may have worked, had the new model Audi not made an appearance. The score was typical B-film - loud, overbearing, and unfitting for the most part. The screenplay by novice writers Duncan Brantley and Mark Wheaton had way too many plot and technical issues, many that could've easily been fixed had the screenplay been proofread by a seasoned writer. The story concept has been done many times before, much better, and this was a tacky attempt that failed miserably. It had me shaking my head asking "but why?" and many "huh?" 's. The casting and performances were adequate, with Agnieszka Grochowska being the only convincing character that seemed to know how to really act.

I get that this was a low budget film, but the amateur errors are no excuse, and didn't need more funding to avoid. It's a generous 5/10 from me

Only 10 for nick stahls performance. I enjoyed the movie, but I went into thinking it was gonna be as bad as what I herd about it. Pleasantly surprised it was better than I thought.

Russian emigrees Michiel Huisman and Luke Bracey are anxious to get ahead in the United States the old-fashioned way: working hard, building good buildings, and so forth. But when things start to go wrong, they turn to gangster Nick Stahl for money, and find themselves in a dark world.

It was mostly shot in 2012, but then Stahl took a few years off from film work and production ground to a halt. Some discontinuities show up because of that. However, it is much more interesting visually than as a story. I think this can be attributed to this being one of half a dozen movies that acclaimed cinematographer Janusz Kaminski directed. Although there's no disputing the competence of credited DP Keith Dunkerly, the shot of the weird light over Los Angles at the 64-minute mark, as well as the shot of the man in the bath tub nearer the end are gripping.

A small waste of time but still a waste. "American Dream" never gets close to the dream, it only shows the nightmarish way hard-working people have to go through in order to built something valuable and iomportant in their lives, in this case two friends (Michiel Huisman and Luke Bracey) who have to make a business with the Russian mob and the bad guy played by Nick Stahl in order to have their project working. Spielberg's regular cinematographer Janusz Kaminski signs this as a director and producer, and what a disjointed wreck this is. I wonder what happened to him in opting for making this - and it gets weirder that the film took ten years to finally get a release.

While the actors are all enjoyable and good to watch (specially Stahl as he always delivers good villains, "Bully" and "Sin City" to mention a few), but the inconsistent, dumb and painful screenplay doesn't help anyway in coming up with something memorable or worth seeing. The two friends and their girlfriends go through a lenghty and violent scenario where Stahl gives them a time to collect his money on a certain deadline but instead of waiting for it he and his henchmen keep on threatning them every hour. He's worst than a bank calling every ten minutes wanting to know if the debt was paid or when.

And was there a point in opening the film with a tough situation by one of the women back in Russia, to later on return to that scenario in the middlwe of the movie, explain what the situation ended and still we don't get any resolution? I figured out it was a way to say that the girlfriends (one of them, at least) were far more brave and cold-blooded than those good-looking wimpy guys.

It's heavily cliched, annoying and jumpy, has been done before and better. 4/10.

I thought this movie was very underrated. Not sure why the low score?. This was about building the American dream, getting kicked in the butt by the banks, and then getting screwed over for wanting to do the right thing.

These 2 guys were dubbed into thinking they were getting help from a fellow countrymen.

I thought the storyline was great, Stahl played the scammer scumbag perfectly, and the two guys along with the girlfriend were solid.

I'll be recommending this movie to everyone looking for a good, underrated movie to watch.