Boring, Derivative, Silly, Poor Acting, Did I mention Silly?

GideonPope

score 3/10

I gave this a 3 because it was not totally unwatchable.

The main problem with this movie is that the story was silly and pointless.

The problem with trying to make a good movie based on a silly and pointless story is that you are starting below zero, and everything else has to be excellent to even bring the movie up to good.

That didn't happen here.

As a first matter, the acting was terrible. The worst acting in the movie came when the guy from Fargo is at the bottom of the stairs talking to the lead character. I almost fell off my chair laughing it was so bad. He literally looked like what you'd expect at the High School talent show - forced, as if he was reading off of a teleprompter.

As a further example of bad acting, the Italian actor who played the Jewish character was terrible throughout. The scene where he is on his knees and "pleading for his life" was laugh out loud funny - it was that unbelievable. Then later, when the same character tries to act tough, it's about as believable as Screech trying to act tough on saved by the bell.

The acting of the Italian mobster is another low point - he overdoes it to the point of making Dinero look reserved.

Beyond the acting, the story stunk.

For example, in one scene the Italian mobster kills his, presumably, long time bodyguard and number 1 because the lead character has come over to the mobster's side and spun a tale about how the bodyguard is double crossing the mobster. Please. I find Clifford the Big Red Dog more believable than that. But the mobster is apparently so incredibly silly that he is willing to murder his right hand man because a guy who, 48 hours earlier, represented the enemy Irish mobster is now telling him his bodyguard is a traitor!!

Sure.

That'd be like Vladimir Putin's right hand man coming to the U.S. and convincing the president, in a matter of hours, that his VP was a spy.

Those are just some examples - the whole movie is one long string of the ridiculous and improbable all strung together into a big mess.

Another example is when the lead character is being forced to kill the Jewish character in the woods. It was obvious from the start that he wasn't going to do it. So he marches him out there, and the two guys who work for his "new" Italian boss don't even bother to keep an eye on him. They let him waltz off into the woods, they hear two gunshots, spaced a minute or more apart, and they think nothing of it.

That is so stupid so as to be beneath dime store pulp fiction, never mind a movie on the big screen.

Then there's the painfully derivative machine gun scene where each machine gun has about 7,000 rounds of ammo in it, and when a guy gets hit, he doesn't just fall limp, like what happens in real life, he stands there with his arms in a zombie reach and wiggles like a Shaker on Sunday for about 3 minutes and 3,000 of the 7,000 rounds are send through his vibrating torso. Ridiculous, silly, and boring.

Another example. Hit men walk in front door of mansion, walk up to room for about 4 minutes, then walk in and Irish mobster is under bed.

What would any non-retarded person do? Well, clearly then would fire 2 or 3 thousand rounds into the bed. Not!

You'd hit the floor and spray under the bed or you'd get up on the bed and fire down, or you'd get back in the hallway and you'd take an angle . . .

But not in the brother's movies. In the brother's movies, everybody acts like a complete moron all of the time.

If a movie is made based on an improbable premise, then the movie can be enjoyable. Fargo is one example of this. The events of that movie are improbable, but not impossible. On the other hand, if a movie is made based on an impossible premise, then the movie has to either aspire to be Buckaroo Banzai - where it is understood that everything is unrealistic - or it is a flop, as in the present case.

I find it funny that some people say that they watch this movie over and over and it "gets better".

I can tell you that, were I to be strapped to a chair with my eyelids held open as in Clockwork Orange (great movie), I would not only NOT think this movie was better, I would think it even worse, because all of the bad acting, impossible behavior, and silly story lines would be even more obvious.

Ayy.

Absolutely terrible movie.

GideonPope 3 January 2008

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw1792690/