Backtrace

I get that amateur writers need to start somewhere, but writer Mike Maples needed to partner up with a seasoned screenwriter for his 2nd-ever film - especially when casting big names, instead of putting Stallone and Modine thru this garbage. The premise of this story did have a chance, but the writing killed it, and very disappointingly so, to say the least.

Some scenes where outrageously ridiculous and riddled with plot issues. Even some of the dialogue seemed to be written by a 5th grader. I feel bad for Stallone and Modine, I hope they got paid well, as this will not show well on their resumes.

Then there was that constant overbearing and out of place annoying score... who agreed to that? Had the score been more appropriate (and not so loud and more absent), the film would have showed much better.

The directing was also nothing to write home about; the camera work was OK in most of the film, but the shaky migraines and some pan shots and zooms were annoying, but I guess director Brian Miller could only do so much with the screenplay he was handed. I also feel he could've directed his cast better, and edited/cut many of the flaws this film had.

A very generous 6/10 from me, mainly for the story's premise, and because Stallone and Modine carried this film from being a total flop.

I was expecting more Stallone in this kind of low budget action drama but alas It's more Matthew Modine as a bank robber who lost his memory and there are several people out to find where he hid 20 million dollars. And this was 7 years ago and still Modine is still not remembering. So along comes FBI agent played by Christopher McDonald wanting answers working with cop Stallone. It's a basic story with some surprises.Its not worthy of the one star reviews. But everyone is there own critic, I gave it 5 out of 10 because I thought it was decent but not great. Stallones latest since creed 2. Funny because a few years ago he announced retirement. Ahem a final Rambo movie? Expendables 4? Not this old dog. I expect Stallone will be in a few more movies maybe till he's 100 . Rocky at the retirement home.Teaching boxing ? Just a thought.

Pretty generic plot with no real surprises, nothing we haven't seen many times before and even though the runtime is pretty short, less than 1h30m, nothing very interesting or engaging is really happening most of the time. The bulk of the interesting action happens in the first 10 minutes and then the last 10 minutes the rest simply felt like a padding. I am surprised Stallone chose to appear in this.

If you don't have anything else to do this may be an option. Gunshot scenes were weird, guys missing dozens of shots, pretty generic. What was that Sykes character all about?There were few scenes with him and most of them are irrelevant or without depth. Actually if I look to all the other characters, there's no depth, nothing. Oh, and the end of the movie was also pretty generic, I've seen some people that said the ending was good, really??

A real shame, the worst movie I've seen in 2018....Sly must have needed the money, and he's in the movie at max 50% of it, bad actors, horribly filmed, stupid scenario, what more can I say, he should be ashamed at this stage of his career to participate in junk like that....avoid it and you'd do yourself a favour....