Blog of Leonid Mamchenkov

Another attempt to match the mood for war and destruction with an appropriate movie, and another failure.  This time it was a Wesley Snipes’ flick - “The Marksman“.  The funny thing here is that I actually saw this movie before, at least twice, and I couldn’t remember it at all.  There are only a couple of moments that fire flashbacks, but both of them are towards the end of the movie. Hopefully next time I will remember it.

This film had some budget, but it ended up seriously boring.  There isn’t much happening at any moment, and there isn’t much going to happen at any next moment.  On top of that, there is a lot of idiocy about military intelligence and Russian-American relationship.

Rating: 4 out of 10.  Save your time and money for something else.

Picking random movies of the DVD rentals shelves has its consequences.  One of those consequences is an ever increasing chance of picking up a really terrible movie.  And that’s precisely what happened to me the other day.  I was in the mood for a war movie, something with US Marines, helicopters, one of those extremely poor Asian countries hidden under the cover of jungles… The DVD cover of “The Hunt for Eagle One” looked promising, even though I was a little bit suspicious about the title.

It turned out to be a really bad movie.  The surprising fact about it was that I actually recognized a few actors in it.  But it was still really really bad.  The sound was bad.  The acting was terrible.  Special effects sucked real bad.  And the dialogs were  disgusting.   Sometimes, bad things can be so bad that they actually end up good.  But this movie is not one of those cases.  It’s just terrible bad.

And even having the principle of watching every movie from start to end uninterrupted didn’t help me this time.  After about watching it for two minutes I started fast-forwarding.  After watching a few random scenes for roughly another minute, I gave up and switched it off.

Rating: 1 out of 10.  Avoid at all costs.

Martin recommended to me “The Great Raid” as one of the new movies with high rating. Since I haven’t heard anything about it, I agreed to rent it.

Directed by: John Dahl
Genres: Action, Drama, War
Cast: Benjamin Bratt, James Franco, Robert Mammone, Max Martini, James Carpinello, Mark Consuelos, Craig McLachlan, Freddie Joe Farnsworth, Laird Macintosh, Jeremy Callaghan, Scott McLean, Paolo Montalban, Clayne Crawford, Sam Worthington, Royston Innes
IMDB raintg: 7.4
My rating: 2.0

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I wasn’t expecting much of “Faith of My Fathers“. The title is slicky and the DVD cover with the pair of military boots didn’t promise much.

Directed by: Peter Markle
Genres: Biography, Drama, War
Cast: Thomas Madell, Michael Arata, Tony Bentley, Brian Bossetta, Jude Cambise, Joe Chrest, Erin Cottrell, Korbi Dean, Carol Dupuy, Louis Dupuy, Brian F. Durkin, J.D. Evermore, Jeff Galpin, Scott Glenn, Nicholas Sean Gomez, Douglas M. Griffin, Justin Groetsch, Shawn Hatosy, Robert Heath Hickman, Elton LeBlanc, Jerry Leggio, Chi Moui Lo, Earl Maddox, Marc Preston, Glenn Robin, Johnny Rock, Troy Ruptash, Arthur Simone, Gary Michael Smith, Jason Alan Smith, Todd J. Smith, Spike Spencer, Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, Ashley Taylor, Louis Webre, Shea Whigham
IMDB raintg: 6.3
My rating: 3.0

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Some films have good promotion by producing companies. Others get recommended by someone. And there those that come from nowhere. “Straight Into Darkness” is one of those.

Directed by: Jeff Burr
Genres: Action, Drama, War
Cast: Brittny Lane Stewart, Ion Bechet, Nelu Dinu, Andrei Dumitrescu, Ryan Francis, Okan Kayam, Scott MacDonald, Liliana Perepelicinic, Gabriel Spahiu, Linda Thorson, Mihai Verbintschi, David Warner
IMDB raintg: 6.9
My rating: 8.0

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