Death Wish ★★☆☆☆

Review of 'Death Wish' which can be found here on YouTube.

Length: 22:14

Written & directed by Dylan Cargill

Genre: Sci-Fi

Date: 2012

Rating: ★★☆☆☆

Logline: A WWII soldier discovers he cannot die and can time travel….then some other stuff happens…it’s all a bit confusing.

Don’t be fooled by the thumping blockbuster soundtrack and the cool HD still of outer space as it’s all downhill from there.

This is a bit of a mixture between Dr. Who and Star Wars where all the parts are done by kids. The acting by all is pretty terrible but we’re not talking showbiz performing arts child actors here. The resurrected protagonist Tom (played by filmmaker Dylan) and little Henrietta Cartwright (his sister probably, Abbie Cargill) do manage to stand above the rest in terms of performances. Having smirking actors during serious scenes is always off putting but actors blatantly reading their lines as they deliver them is even worse. The dips in poor sound recording as well as the indecipherable mutterings of the fellow in the balaclava and the gasmask wearing guys doesn’t really help any either.

Structurally, the opening sequence is more confusing than it should be. Rearranging scenes, even just, Meteor, Berlin, London would alleviate this messy introduction but then the mixture of historical events with futuristic gadgetry will probably flummox audiences even further. The sci-fi plot is pretty confusing and not very viewer friendly I’m afraid. Unfortunately Dom’s longwinded “universes” exposition is so visually and aurally unstimulating, it won’t make anything clearer. There are a couple of lengthy dialogue scenes but they all suffer from bad acting, limited camera shots and not enough cut aways.

In terms of production, the film is a bit shambolic. I doubt anyone who watches this will be remotely convinced that they’re watching a story set in the 30’s as set design is severely lacking. Camera work is shoddy (although I did like the skewed angles involved) and the external tracking shots should definitely have been scrapped as the shaky camera and camera crew reflection in the windows are not good (tho there is one quite good shot near the end). Recommend investing in a skateboard at least. The saving grace is the special effects and the soundtrack. Some FX’s are obvious CGI but are of a reasonably good standard and work well over the shot footage. The theatrical soundtrack does well to aid tension during the action scenes and is used in all the right places. Shame it’s all wasted on the oddball plot which is hard to follow.

This is one effort where all the major problems should have been evident during the script stage but somehow managed to get itself on screen.

 

Best Bit: Some of the SFX’s are really good.

Worst Bit: Where to start? Probably with the bad script I imagine.

Final thought: Then I realized this was made by kids and thought I'd been a bit harsh and that it wasn’t all that bad.

Read a condensed review of this film on Twitter here.