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Reviews12
gorguruga's rating
I'll begin by saying I'm a fan of District 9, it's one of my favourite sci-fi movies of this century so you can imagine how excited I was when I heard there was another movie out by the same director. I'll admit, perhaps my high expectations have somewhat clouded my opinion of Chappie because District 9 set the bar so high. However, that doesn't change the fact that I had to watch Chappie in bits and pieces over the course of 2 weeks because every time I decided to give it another chance, within a few minutes there was a scene which was so implausible, or badly written, or poorly acted that I was forced to hit the stop button again.
That pattern continued for the first 1 hour 30 minutes, playing a few minutes, stopping, then resuming a few days later. The first three quarters are just littered with problems, including mediocre acting, implausible scenarios, poor scripting and questionable casting. The robot CGI is excellent though from start to finish.
But I was relieved to find that there came a point when the movie actually improved significantly. The last 30 minutes we have a pick up of pace and the show closes very well indeed so overall it was worth persisting and finally reaching the end (although I did ask myself several times whether I would ever get there).
Worth watching for the excellent grand finale, just don't expect a movie on the level of District 9.
That pattern continued for the first 1 hour 30 minutes, playing a few minutes, stopping, then resuming a few days later. The first three quarters are just littered with problems, including mediocre acting, implausible scenarios, poor scripting and questionable casting. The robot CGI is excellent though from start to finish.
But I was relieved to find that there came a point when the movie actually improved significantly. The last 30 minutes we have a pick up of pace and the show closes very well indeed so overall it was worth persisting and finally reaching the end (although I did ask myself several times whether I would ever get there).
Worth watching for the excellent grand finale, just don't expect a movie on the level of District 9.
Here are the main problems with the movie: 1. Bad acting - nearly all the leading roles provide us with poor performances, including RZA himself.
2. Bad storyline/script - the story isn't terrible, although similar plots have been regurgitated countless times before. But the progression of events and the way the story is pieced together lets the production down badly.
3. Bad direction - Although there are some scenes and shots in the movie which have some fancy and praise-worthy cinematography and fx, other parts of the movie just seem very quickly shot, without care. More attention by the director would have improved things.
4. Don't care about characters - this goes back to the acting and script. At no point in the movie do you really feel true empathy for the characters. They seem like cardboard cutouts, not real people.
5. Average martial arts - while there are some impressive fight scenes, most of the martial arts in the movie is nothing spectacular.
Overall: This really comes across like an episode of the old Power Rangers TV Show, cheap and rushed. Or like the first Mortal Kombat movie. They all have a similar sort of vibe. If you removed the blood and gore from the movie you could see it as purely children's entertainment. As far as it's replay value, I'd say it's about zero. Can't say I'll ever watch it again.
However, if you're a fan of RZA and Wu Tang, you'll hear some of their tracks throughout the film and get to see RZA in the role of a protagonist. I don't think you'll be amazed by any means, but not totally disappointed. It gets 4 out of 10 from me, a lot of other kung fu flicks from the 70s and 80s, even up to present day, are much better than this. As long as you watch it without expecting anything great you'll possibly be mildly entertained. You'll want to watch it anyway if you're a Wu fan, just don't expect Fist of Legend, Drunken Master or Shogun Assassin, it's nowhere near that level but still not the worst martial arts movie out there. Just a shame that it leans more towards being a bad film than a good film.
2. Bad storyline/script - the story isn't terrible, although similar plots have been regurgitated countless times before. But the progression of events and the way the story is pieced together lets the production down badly.
3. Bad direction - Although there are some scenes and shots in the movie which have some fancy and praise-worthy cinematography and fx, other parts of the movie just seem very quickly shot, without care. More attention by the director would have improved things.
4. Don't care about characters - this goes back to the acting and script. At no point in the movie do you really feel true empathy for the characters. They seem like cardboard cutouts, not real people.
5. Average martial arts - while there are some impressive fight scenes, most of the martial arts in the movie is nothing spectacular.
Overall: This really comes across like an episode of the old Power Rangers TV Show, cheap and rushed. Or like the first Mortal Kombat movie. They all have a similar sort of vibe. If you removed the blood and gore from the movie you could see it as purely children's entertainment. As far as it's replay value, I'd say it's about zero. Can't say I'll ever watch it again.
However, if you're a fan of RZA and Wu Tang, you'll hear some of their tracks throughout the film and get to see RZA in the role of a protagonist. I don't think you'll be amazed by any means, but not totally disappointed. It gets 4 out of 10 from me, a lot of other kung fu flicks from the 70s and 80s, even up to present day, are much better than this. As long as you watch it without expecting anything great you'll possibly be mildly entertained. You'll want to watch it anyway if you're a Wu fan, just don't expect Fist of Legend, Drunken Master or Shogun Assassin, it's nowhere near that level but still not the worst martial arts movie out there. Just a shame that it leans more towards being a bad film than a good film.
The Devil's Business just came across as an extremely low budget made-for-TV movie. It was heavily dependent on the conversation between just 2 people for the majority of the movie duration. In order to carry that sort of setup off you're going to need some top quality acting and while the acting was occasionally decent in this movie, it was also sometimes below average.
Both Billy Clarke and Jonathan Hansler gave decent performances for the most part but Jack Gordon couldn't really match them for most of his on-screen time, although there was one scene where he demonstrated his true capability and that just about saved his credibility. Perhaps the scripting for his character was part of the problem. All the actors showed promise but they really needed more time and more takes to film the scenes perfectly. I assume either the budget didn't allow them to do this, or the director didn't spot the potential for improvement.
The writing overall was good and could even be considered the stand-out feature, it's just a shame that the budget couldn't be stretched considerably to make this into a real film and bring out the writing with cut-scenes and great cinematography. Instead, nearly all the action takes place in a darkly-lit small house somewhere in England. As a result, the visual imagery is just dull and boring for most of the movie and it gets tiresome rather quickly.
The production value was just a notch above the sort of movie a student might make at college or university, it was just so low that it was almost filmed like an episode of some British television show from the 80's, just sadly not with the same sort of entertainment value.
All the actors had some passion to their work, the writing was decent, the direction, while flawed, showed promise. But as a complete package, a fairly terrible movie that I just can't recommend. Maybe with a bigger budget it could have been a totally different story..
Both Billy Clarke and Jonathan Hansler gave decent performances for the most part but Jack Gordon couldn't really match them for most of his on-screen time, although there was one scene where he demonstrated his true capability and that just about saved his credibility. Perhaps the scripting for his character was part of the problem. All the actors showed promise but they really needed more time and more takes to film the scenes perfectly. I assume either the budget didn't allow them to do this, or the director didn't spot the potential for improvement.
The writing overall was good and could even be considered the stand-out feature, it's just a shame that the budget couldn't be stretched considerably to make this into a real film and bring out the writing with cut-scenes and great cinematography. Instead, nearly all the action takes place in a darkly-lit small house somewhere in England. As a result, the visual imagery is just dull and boring for most of the movie and it gets tiresome rather quickly.
The production value was just a notch above the sort of movie a student might make at college or university, it was just so low that it was almost filmed like an episode of some British television show from the 80's, just sadly not with the same sort of entertainment value.
All the actors had some passion to their work, the writing was decent, the direction, while flawed, showed promise. But as a complete package, a fairly terrible movie that I just can't recommend. Maybe with a bigger budget it could have been a totally different story..