With a sprawling cast and in five languages, Polypore knows what it wants to be: somewhere in between A Scanner Darkly, Jumper, Rendition, 24 and LOST. However, the budget is spread too thin to achieve this colossus of an idea.
Cinematography is sometimes amazingly exquisite when Barack applies his true skills, such as cityscapes, time lapse nightscapes with glorious pans across countryside and forest. Other times, locations are lit poorly and left uncolored in post, revealing huge spotlight shadows on actors and overexposed areas making the shot too sharp and "HD" ish.
There is an animation sequence, which is an excellent explanation to the convoluted plot – Kill Bill in conception. But I felt this should head up the movie. I would have loved more of this animated stuff – really, a first-class job here.
The script needed tightening long before shooting, and needed to decide on its tone also. Is it a parody? Is it a serious thriller? It was pretty entertaining in parts; sometimes slick and gorgeous like a music video, sometimes like a teen TV show, other times, I was rueful and critical. Occasionally I was embarrassed. But I'd like to know what genre I am looking at by the end of the first act and have the palette make sense throughout.
Another holdup is the huge cast. It's difficult to know who was who by the end. Many new characters would appear without telling the viewer who they were, often with guns.
Barack could stick with the gold and have a tight movie. Kyle Barry as Sebastian is great but woefully under-used (maybe because he was busy writing the soundtrack) The two doctors in Paris are humorous and could have been instrumental in describing what was going on – they seem most rounded out of all the characters. Trent (Barack) could have spoken more – he's got some screen presence. There's also a fantastic Tarantino-esque meditating assassin near the end – and a nice kill involving a car is sheer brilliance.
There are an amazing amount of good shots here to be mined in more detail. A paring down and a re-edit would make this a festival crowd pleaser no doubt, but in its current form it's more of a chore – and no festival crowd wants to work at a story, even if there are moments of genius. The film rollicks along and is terrific in places, and you can see the immense pleasure the entire cast and crew must have had making it: and to director Barack's credit, it must have been an epic task to pull this off especially considering this was "Kickstarted". Massive props for that.
Cinematography is sometimes amazingly exquisite when Barack applies his true skills, such as cityscapes, time lapse nightscapes with glorious pans across countryside and forest. Other times, locations are lit poorly and left uncolored in post, revealing huge spotlight shadows on actors and overexposed areas making the shot too sharp and "HD" ish.
There is an animation sequence, which is an excellent explanation to the convoluted plot – Kill Bill in conception. But I felt this should head up the movie. I would have loved more of this animated stuff – really, a first-class job here.
The script needed tightening long before shooting, and needed to decide on its tone also. Is it a parody? Is it a serious thriller? It was pretty entertaining in parts; sometimes slick and gorgeous like a music video, sometimes like a teen TV show, other times, I was rueful and critical. Occasionally I was embarrassed. But I'd like to know what genre I am looking at by the end of the first act and have the palette make sense throughout.
Another holdup is the huge cast. It's difficult to know who was who by the end. Many new characters would appear without telling the viewer who they were, often with guns.
Barack could stick with the gold and have a tight movie. Kyle Barry as Sebastian is great but woefully under-used (maybe because he was busy writing the soundtrack) The two doctors in Paris are humorous and could have been instrumental in describing what was going on – they seem most rounded out of all the characters. Trent (Barack) could have spoken more – he's got some screen presence. There's also a fantastic Tarantino-esque meditating assassin near the end – and a nice kill involving a car is sheer brilliance.
There are an amazing amount of good shots here to be mined in more detail. A paring down and a re-edit would make this a festival crowd pleaser no doubt, but in its current form it's more of a chore – and no festival crowd wants to work at a story, even if there are moments of genius. The film rollicks along and is terrific in places, and you can see the immense pleasure the entire cast and crew must have had making it: and to director Barack's credit, it must have been an epic task to pull this off especially considering this was "Kickstarted". Massive props for that.