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daveycrockett_44
Reviews
The Purifiers (2004)
Cool, slick and fun
I'm a big martial arts fan and Lord of the rings fan, so I went to the Edinburgh festival specifically to watch this film and wasn't disappointed. Kinda based on the Warriors, the story is fairly simple and has no pretensions of being anything other than a kickass fight film. Kevin McKidd is brilliant as the super bad guy moses, and the rest of the cast, while not the best actors in the world, are pretty hot when it comes to the fight scenes. I read somewhere that they only hired martial artists from around the world to play the main fighters, and this obviously shows as the fight sequences are brilliantly realistic and obviously not body doubled. The look of the film is really futuristic and slick, with some stunning slo-mo action sequences that I've never seen in a British film before.
The soundtrack is really well put together and simply pulls you through the story, and I think my one complaint is that the film is over before you know it. I've heard a rumor that it's going to be released alongside the re-release of the warriors next year - if that's true then I'll definitely be seeing it on the big screen again...
Day of the Sirens (2002)
utter utter dross
Saw this at a student friends house who has a collection of all of the directors other titles, and he watches them when he's wrecked and laughs himself silly. I however didn't quite see the funny side as I watched something that was quite honestly the worst film I've ever seen. Some of the scenes were so badly shot, lit, acted, directed and written, half the time I felt like the director was secretly mocking the audience - laughing at us while we watch open mouthed at this horrific display of poor acting, terrible dialogue and cheap hand held dodgy video camera-work.
The ultimate shot for me was when a gang of "commandos" storm a house that is about to explode, in a scene blatantly stolen from SPEED. I couldn't believe it when my friend pointed out to me that one of these "commandos" looked about 20 stone and had a ponytail! Another corker is when the lead actress (if you can call her that) is "sealed" in a car as their is a risk of chemical/nuclear contamination. However what they use to do the sealing is obviously shaving foam!!!!! It's like an early episode of Doctor Who, but without the snappy dialogue and convincing performances. Saaed Jaffery looks completely past his prime and in most scenes he can barely speak let alone act. The one moment when I nearly cried laughing is when he has to take his dog to the vets to be put down, and the dog is leaping around the place full of health and joy.
Bad, Bad, Bad...