Cactus Jack

This reviewer, andrewoliverjazz, thought that anyone who only gave this ugly filth 1 or 2 stars was/is obviously a conservative. Andrew should learn manners and stay with discussing the film, and not insulting people, just because they disagree with their/his/her taste for foul mouthed despicable gutter filth!

Gutter language and attitude has grown to unbelievably all time low standards for at least 20 years! In that time it has gotten to the point whereby you can hardly see a film (from the USA or the UK) that uses bad language gratuitously throughout. It has become the must be type of script for many, many lackluster and talent less directors; who think they can score kudos by being shocking. This excuse for a drama is the most foul mouthed and disgusting release I have ever had the displeasure of watching...EVER! Its ludicrously inept with its white trash supremacist message because those idiots (no matter how lacking in brain cells and intelligence they are) do not/would not string together phrases in the manner of which they are used here. Proper grammatical usage just doesn't allow for such crap!

This film should never have been given a release (or made for that matter) by the Board of Censors. What is the point of protective censorship if the idiots on the board are lacking in common sense and respectful morality, thus allowing offensive garbage to be distributed. They, and the directors/Turner brothers, should be dragged into a court and charged with an offense of public decency etc then sacked, with the Turner brothers having their film licenses/credentials cancelled and revoked for good!

There is enough foul mouthed thug culture in our streets today, and I am sick to death of directors, script writers and producers pushing it into our homes relentlessly; just because they have no ideas, no real talent and no decency!

Not necessarily bad but too long scenes, same speech countless times. Could have been a good short movie and still pass the message.

This is very hard to watch. But I recommend everyone watch it because these people do exist and they exist en mass. The film is well done if you can listen to how the main character talks long enough.

Title says it all. This is a waste of time and effort and shouldn't even be viewed by by anyone. It's pure tribalism trying to get one side to hate the other based on assumptions of a reddit rat. Mind numbingly ridiculous and over the top in the worst way possible.

Well now, this is a very ugly and unpleasant way to spend 80 minutes, and I don't recommend you do.

'Cactus Jack' tries to take the Blair Witch "found footage" genre and politicize it in a very 2021 way that jettisons storytelling, characterization and all conceivable entertainment value.

The premise is a documentary filmmaker begins filming a far right fanatic as he rants about the state of the world at great length and starts plotting to kill people. And that's about it: that's the film.

Early on it put me in mind of the (incomparably better) Interview With The Assassin, which pulled off a much more believable and enigmaticly engaging antagonist because he wasn't required to just spout strawman profanities from the first time he opened his mouth until the last.

The first 20 minutes are the best, but after that they just go off the rails: more than half the film has no story at all, it is simply Cactus Jack frothing at the camera in such relentlessly hateful ways I had to skip through parts just to get to where the story picked up again and protect my mental health. So I must have missed about 30 minutes of it, and I'm glad I did. And I still felt like I needed to take a bath throughout.

As the titular gun nut, R. Michael Gull is very good, even if EVERYTHING he is made to say is so over the top racist, sexist, homo/islamo/trans/etc-phobic, he starts feeling unrealistic within seconds. People just don't talk this way in real life: they don't add three or more targeted victim groups to EVERY sentence (LITERALLY every sentence) they speak, and then end it by reminding you they hate their mother. That's just silly. And hence the fictional bad guy *himself* becomes silly. I'm pretty sure even the Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan has to take a break, crack a joke and pet a dog once in awhile.

What's really odd is there's no rejoinder presented to the positions Cactus Jack puts forwards: a good proportion of what he says is actually factually true, so I'm puzzled as to what the filmmakers are trying to achieve. If there ARE no factual arguments that disprove them, is it just the fact that he is prepared to LOOK at those uncomfortable truths that makes him a 'bad' person? Should 'good' people then believe things that aren't true? What kind of message is that to put out into the world? It seems the filmmakers simply think the mere fact that he holds them is enough to condemn him in the audience's eyes, and so don't offer any reasons why he should conclude anything differently, or realize he is mistaken in his conclusions: I'm sure there must be SOME good liberal/left-wing arguments against his positions on race, crime, terrorism, etc, but if there are it doesn't seem the filmmakers are aware of them. So they simply have him state his beliefs with a hefty dollop of the foulest language they can come up with on top to shock the audience and then hurry on.

What most disturbs me is that this seems to be how (most?) Democrats see the 70,000,000+ people in their own country who voted for Trump in 2016: a "basket of deplorables" with no redeeming features, no possible grounds or rationale for any of their concerns or grievances. Those 70,000,000 people are simply evil.

But "evil", obviously, is a very unhealthy and unhelpful way to consider every second neighbour, workmate and family member in your life. It won't make you, them, or your country any happier, safer or unified in the future. As soon as you dehumanize people in this cartoonish way, the civilized conversation is over and the battle lines are drawn. The less you listen to (and care for) these people, the more angry and violent they're going to become. Isn't that obvious?

For all this, it's still impressive what the makers have done with a miniscule budget: the acting and (iphone!) photography is more than would be hoped for with a project of this size, and the two guys in it have clearly committed themselves to the mission. The problem really is just that the mission is extremist political propaganda that will only cause further division in a country more divided now than it has been probably since the Civil War. Which seems to me an objectively awful thing to do. I really wish I hadn't seen it.