After watching this film I've come to the conclusion that it's one of the worst I've ever seen.
So you have a samurai with a six-stringed guitar on a quest to Lost Vegas to take the throne that the King has left behind on his deathbed. So does everyone else though - even Death himself!
Now, that paragraph is perfectly accurate. What is described sounds like a pretty cool movie. But in a concept and a setting ripe with potential for making a standout movie on a tight budget, it was failure after failure after failure. On a few occasions, it simply snatched defeat out of the jaws of victory.
So I'll list the problems in order of the severity in which they harm the film:
1. Pacing. It's God-awful. Fast when it should be slow, slow almost all the time - it just drags and drags and drags. A half-way competent editor could have been a lot of help here.
2. Acting. Budget films don't have a lot of choice when it comes to choosing a cast, but there's no point in using people that just don't care about the role and couldn't act their way out of a paper bag. Pretty much every actor throughout the entire movie seemed to be thinking
"Hmmm... Hope we can finish this up quick and get some lunch. I'm starving. The SO is in town this weekend... Wonder what we'll do?"
And pay that more attention to what they were doing on screen. I felt like I didn't want to be there and it didn't look like most of them did either.
3. Attention to detail: There were jarring parts where you'd see a 1980's Ford 150 van, in a brilliant blue (probably normal blue, but brilliant in comparison to the super-dingy tonal palette around it).
Or a modern windmill farm in a post-apocalyptic world; there were plenty of old-school electricity generating windmills from the 1930's they could base some designs on, but... No.
4. Poor editing: Non-synchronous sound? In a finished product?! This is not a hard thing to fix. It didn't seem like an 'artistic use of non-synchronous sound', to quash that idea before it can rise.
5. Narrative structure: Almost completely useless; a skimpy plot, random fight scenes, no build up, no pacing - pretty much the mayonnaise and American cheese sandwich of plots - bland and foul all at the same time, and it couldn't be filling if it tried.
In conclusion, it seems like a student film with a slightly larger budget, but on all the things that count, it just becomes a waste in the end; a waste of the viewer's time, a waste of the money used in the project; and a waste of the director's time. This might be a turd that could be polished, or totally re-shot in the future, but as it stands... It's just a dog pile.
So you have a samurai with a six-stringed guitar on a quest to Lost Vegas to take the throne that the King has left behind on his deathbed. So does everyone else though - even Death himself!
Now, that paragraph is perfectly accurate. What is described sounds like a pretty cool movie. But in a concept and a setting ripe with potential for making a standout movie on a tight budget, it was failure after failure after failure. On a few occasions, it simply snatched defeat out of the jaws of victory.
So I'll list the problems in order of the severity in which they harm the film:
1. Pacing. It's God-awful. Fast when it should be slow, slow almost all the time - it just drags and drags and drags. A half-way competent editor could have been a lot of help here.
2. Acting. Budget films don't have a lot of choice when it comes to choosing a cast, but there's no point in using people that just don't care about the role and couldn't act their way out of a paper bag. Pretty much every actor throughout the entire movie seemed to be thinking
"Hmmm... Hope we can finish this up quick and get some lunch. I'm starving. The SO is in town this weekend... Wonder what we'll do?"
And pay that more attention to what they were doing on screen. I felt like I didn't want to be there and it didn't look like most of them did either.
3. Attention to detail: There were jarring parts where you'd see a 1980's Ford 150 van, in a brilliant blue (probably normal blue, but brilliant in comparison to the super-dingy tonal palette around it).
Or a modern windmill farm in a post-apocalyptic world; there were plenty of old-school electricity generating windmills from the 1930's they could base some designs on, but... No.
4. Poor editing: Non-synchronous sound? In a finished product?! This is not a hard thing to fix. It didn't seem like an 'artistic use of non-synchronous sound', to quash that idea before it can rise.
5. Narrative structure: Almost completely useless; a skimpy plot, random fight scenes, no build up, no pacing - pretty much the mayonnaise and American cheese sandwich of plots - bland and foul all at the same time, and it couldn't be filling if it tried.
In conclusion, it seems like a student film with a slightly larger budget, but on all the things that count, it just becomes a waste in the end; a waste of the viewer's time, a waste of the money used in the project; and a waste of the director's time. This might be a turd that could be polished, or totally re-shot in the future, but as it stands... It's just a dog pile.