Road Wars

Obvious attempt to cash in on Fury Road, and it's from Asylum, so you know to go in with low expectations. But, I'm a fiend for post-apocalypse road war stuff, so I had to give it a chance. And... it was okay. It benefited from low expectations.

The cars are at least good enough to have maybe passed for extras in some of Fury Road's crowd scenes, so there's that. Unfortunately, they don't really get to do much. There's only one real chase scene and it's brief and doesn't entail much except driving around, with no real stunt work. The cover shows lots of vehicles and explosions. You get about five or six cars, and no explosions. As for the driving scenes, director's never going to be confused with George Miller.

Plot-wise it's Mad Max cross-pollinated with I Am Legend. Society's broken down and the few survivors and scavenging for everything. Gasoline seems to be more plentiful than water, though, since petrol's the one thing they don't seem to fret about much. A lot of people have become victims of a "vampire virus" and, since they luckily have a biochemist on their team, they're trying to work on a cure. One guy who may be immune shows up; the filmmakers are so desperate to make him seem like Mad Max that he has an Aussie accent, and they even have him wearing a black leather jacket with one shoulderpad.

Their big problem is they're running out of ammunition to fight off the nightly attacks from vampires, and to look for more they'd have to leave the only known source of water. Mostly they sit around talking about this, when you'd rather they were driving. It's not really that difficult to make one of these movies more satisfying -- just get decent-looking cars (which they did) and show them driving around a lot (which they didn't).

So, it's not very good, but it's still better than most of the Italian Road Warrior ripoffs that swarmed the video stores back in the days of VHS, so, I cut it some slack. Production values aren't bad, the survivors looked suitably skangy, and the acting's not great but isn't painful, either. And the plot's not compelling, but there is one and it's not overly clumsy. It's an okay way to kill 90 minutes as long as you're not expecting too much. Better than most Asylum films, but that's damning with faint praise.

Slow, boring, stupid. I understand the filmmakers didn't have a huge budget to work with, but they could still come with something better than this. Yeah, it's a Mad Max ripoff, but there has been a bunch of those, and at least some of them are entertaining! This one has nothing going for it, with the exception maybe of the cars, which look nice (the "hero" car is horrible, though), but what's the point of a Mad Max clone where NONE of the cars get trashed? There are no car stunts, either!

Guys, those cars were supposed to be ruins on themselves, don't tell me you couldn't destroy at least one or two for your "epic" movie! I guess the cars were rented from real-life fans who built their own "Fury Road"-like vehicles, since most of them have working tail-lights (a necessity when you are driving through the wasteland, I suppose) which suggest that the cars were street-legit, which wouldn't make sense for this kind of vehicles.

I have seen other Asylum titles just for the fun of watching an unintentional bad movie. This one is just bad, not funny. Avoid like the plague. If you really want to see a Mad Max movie, grab the old ones or go see Fury Road.

B-movie? Try D. This flick is cheap, lower than low budget with serious issues with scenography (brand new trucks against supposedly post- apoc buildings), costumography (neatly trimmed, fresh looking actors in supposedly post-apoc world).

However, despite bad acting the movie has some good points. No CGI, all is done with cool MadMax-esque vehicles. Attempt at Aussie accents is also sort of a bonus (for being an homage) if not a slight comic relief.

The best in this movie is the story. It doesn't have a beginning. Audience is waking up into a nightmare (just as main character does). It doesn't have an ending either. What kind of ending is there after the end of the world? In between the moment lights come in and lights come out, we see an authentic, believable story about survivors. they have hopes, doubts, they have issues, they love beyond death, they are just trying to do their best to survive. I the end, they are defeated. Again, by love...

Have made no secret in the past of intensely disliking, and even outright hating a lot, a vast majority of The Asylum's (near-universally maligned for good reason) output, though there is curiosity as to whether they are capable of making something good and compulsive about their output's badness. Admittedly, The Asylum do have a small group of watchable films and the occasional (big emphasis on that word) above average one, unfortunately outweighed by the lacklustre at best and often dreadful films they churn out.

'Road Wars' is a mock-buster of 'Mad Max: Fury Road'. Although one of its year's most positively reviewed films critically, like several acclaimed films it seems it's garnered some at times vitriolic hate. If those that disliked 'Fury Road' watched 'Road Wars' out of curiosity it is more than likely that they'll appreciate that film more once seeing 'Road Wars'. While not quite one of The Asylum's all-time worst everything bad about their output is present and it's basically an abomination that shows no shame it seems in being as bad as it is.

1/10 is not a common rating for me these days and generally try to be encouraging and balanced when reviewing. There have been a fair share of films seen that have deserved the rating and look as though they didn't even try, other than wasting good actors that is one of film's biggest cardinal sins for me. That's the case with 'Road Wars'.

As expected, 'Road Wars' is cheap, and that's being generous, visually, even for something made on a low budget. It's very drably and sometimes dizzyingly shot, incoherently edited (bacon-slicer-like) with glaring and unforgivably sloppy continuity errors and even the scenery doesn't make much impression despite being actually the least bad aspect of the film. There are worse special effects in other Asylum films, they still look very cheap though and like they were an afterthought and made in haste. Am aware of the film being low-budget, but there are examples of low-budget films that still don't look awful and manage to be pretty good.

Can remember little about the music, which tended to be intrusive, annoying and out of place. The script makes little sense, sounds awkward constantly and on the wrong side of camp throughout.

There is absolutely nothing thrilling, tense, suspenseful, emotionally investable or fun about the story. The predictability may have been forgivable if the film was actually engaging let alone exciting but it fails to be either throughout. 'Road Wars' is basically non-stop dullness and intelligence-insulting ridiculousness, with unintentional humour because of the excessive cheese, too much often extraneous talk and not enough action and extremely flat and irritating character writing.

Its incredibly dreadful with no exceptions acting from a cast that wouldn't even pass for Z-grade is one of the film's worst assets.

Overall, really poor. 1/10 Bethany Cox

yes I watched this last night , found an online copy. it wants to be mad max 2/road warrior meets resident evil. this is just my op. ... it fails miserably on both accounts. weak soundtrack, weak hook... by hook i mean, in the first five minutes a movie -or book- should hook the reader/viewer, so they want to continue. my ratings hinge on re-watchability... i had to fast forward through most of the movie-- weak acting-- weak dialogue-- weak story line-- the movie quality is good, the filming. but everything else is "b" movie grade. the cars , the acting etc.

I wish i hadn't watched it in the first place, if fast forwarding is even watching. It will not be re-watched. there is a lot of sitting in the desert, driving in the desert. pointless dialogue and stuff that doesn't make sense.

I have no doubt that someone will say "this movie is epic", well, to that , i say ... every turd has its punchbowl. hey , i am gonna use that in my thread from the sandbox message board entitled "the poop group". check it out.

comment , bring all your poop slinging to my poop group in the sandbox message board I thought you said you weren't insane anymore?