woensdag 15 januari 2014

Down and Dangerous (2013)

Genre : Crime
Country: USA

Cast :
John T. Woods : Paul Boxer
Paulie Rojas : Olivia Ivarra
Ross Marquand : Henry Langlois

Director :
Zak Forsman

Summary
Paul Boxer is the most inventive and principled smuggler in the trade, and has never needed to carry a gun. When violent mid-level traffickers coerce him into designing a foolproof plan to bring several kilos of cocaine across the México border, he maneuvers to rid himself of their hold over him once and for all.

My opinion
You can classify D & D safely between Dante 's Peak , The Perfect Storm , The Impossible , The Day After Tomorrow and Twister. So it’s a disaster movie ! The action is a disaster . The script is a disaster . And the performances are even a bigger disaster . Don’t let yourself be fooled by the trailer, because it looks flashy and slick . There are a few slogans fired at you that sound promising. As there are : "Down and Dangerous looks like the sh*t" , "One bad mother of a movie" and "This is gonna be a bad film ." That's almost correct. I see it more as "Down and Dangerous looks like sh*t" , " One motherf*cking bad movie" and "This is gonna be a very sad movie ."

The action is weak and boring . A series of fist fights . Ah yes, because Paul ( John T. Woods ) handles a golden rule, namely, that he never uses any firearms , but rather his fists ( even after it was severely beaten with a heavy hammer ) . Even if he has a gun in his hands , he ostentatiously takes the bullets out and throws himself in a man to man fight with bare hands . The excellent shooting part is performed by Henry ( Ross Marquand ). Apparently, a DEA agent who has received a medal for some heroic deed . Now he clearly didn’t get that medal for his shooting talent cause he really sucks at that. I’ve never seen such bad aiming in my life before .

The script is confusing and illogical . The film seems to lead somewhere but I don't have a clue where it tries to lead to. Obviously it's a low-budget film sponsored by family and admirers. The images are sometimes good but the execution is downright lousy. Hopefully this is not a sign of how future "independent" movies are going to look like. The weakest link for me was Paulie Rojas . A wonderful appearance with those Bambi-eyes that look at you in a tempting way. Besides the fact that she has an anorexic appearance, her acting is just awful. Completely amateurish and her dialogues sound as if she's constantly aided by a prompter. The scene where she explains the complete procedure of producing drugs, looks so incredibly unreal. It's like she is just reading it directly from a paper. If I was the guy who was selling the drugs , I had her executed on the spot. The (obviously predictable) love affair that she restarts with Paul has absolutely no meaningful contribution to the film and feels so contrived and numb. There's more emotion in a jar of pudding than these brief romantic moments that are used to fill up the movie. And don't get me started about that terribly heavy Mexican accent . The would-be Mexican drug lord Rafael Garza is also a joke . He runs a family business with incredibly stupid relatives. He tries to keep up the image of being a tough and violent gangster. But when the suitcase with his precious drugs ends up in the pool , he jumps after it as a toddler. A tough gangster would have kicked that girls ass into the water to retrieve the suitcase, I guess.

Anyway , a terribly bad movie and painful to watch. Keep a far distance from this one. You have been warned !