Reviews

I don't even know where to begin. The family of four being terrorized by a few slow moving psychopaths in a trailer park that is completely void of a population. And the victims do so many stupid things it reminded me of that Geico Halloween commercial where they're all doing stupid things in trying to escape the killer.

This movie is so full of cliches and just plain idiotic behavior one has to wonder how they managed to live as long as they did in the first place.

They don't even try to defend themselves!

The father finds a revolver in one of the empty trailers and has to explain to his teenage son how to use it. Now what kid grows up without knowing how to shoot a revolver? You mean to tell me that he never watched cop or western movies while growing up? Then, he comes upon his sister being stabbed and doesn't shoot the killer, only warns the killer to stop!

So much more about this movie, but you get my point. Do yourself a favor and pass on this pile of trash that isn't even good enough to be a time waster.

While there a few similarities, mainly with the main character's name being Dalton, don't confuse or even compare this to the original Road House and more of a stand alone type film. A few examples, this film takes place in the Florida Keys, Dalton isn't an intelligent book reading type but more so a regular type who has his origins in UFC and he doesn't have a mentor as in the original. There's also a killer crocodile which I found an odd part of the plot. I found this version to be watchable but it is not nearly as entertaining or exciting as the classic Swayze film. I do commend Jake Gyllenhall's performance though and had this been an actual remake it could have been much better.

The show is much better than I had hoped for but I am withholding a better rating for it until I have seen more episodes. The only problem that I have with it right now is the character of Cameron, John's new protector. The CW must be rubbing off on Fox with it casting of a 100lb hottie for a terminator because though Summer Glau does a somewhat convincingly portrayal it is still rather hard to believe.

There are also some things that don't add up. For instance, the timeline is supposedly taking place between T2 and T3 yet there was no hint or indication in T3 of any of the sequences from the TV show. Perhaps it's due to the fact that TV shows and books are usually not cannon in this area, but it still does make an impact for the true fan. But in the show there are characters popping up such as other T800 terminators and even Kyle Reese's brother. It is explained that the new terminator played by Glau is a new model and that is no doubt why she is able to win the battles that she faces. we still have to find out more on her model type, but that's another thing that doesn't add up. You would think that Skynet would be sending back more of the T1000 type of terminators like in T2, but then again, we don't really know when these terminators were actually sent back and they could have been before the T1000 was made. One thing that we have all found out in watching films that deal with time travel, anything is possible so the best thing to do is just sit back and watch the show and forget about the inconsistencies with the films.

By today's standards it seems that every film must have action and unbelievable stunt work sequences every few moments to maintain the audience's attention span. That being said, if that's what you're looking for then you will be disappointed in this film. I, on the other hand, found this film to be fairly good. It's about a CIA operative who works as a cryptologist who's girlfriend is murdered by terrorists. He seeks revenge on the terrorists after being refused by his superiors for the company to take any action to bring the terrorists to justice and manages to come up with some incriminating evidence that the CIA denied having. He then uses the evidence to blackmail his superiors into training him for the mission. He discovers that the terrorists are in Czechoslovakia and of course, his hiding place for the evidence is found by the CIA after he's in Czech territory and before you know it he's trying to dodge both the Czech soldiers and the CIA agents out to silence him once and for all, with a surprising twist at the climax of the film. John Savage does a fairly good job in the title role and Christopher Plummer is a convincingly likable Communist baddie. As I said, if it's action you like then don't bother. But for a more slow paced and realistic film then you may enjoy this.

First of all, I have given it 1 star only for the fact that Hines took this story as closely to the original version as possible, other than that it deserves a rating of -10 stars (that's *minus* 10 stars). I bought this film only out of sheer curiosity and now I feel that I should write Pendragon Pictures for a refund and perhaps even pursue a lawsuit for seriously damaging my brain. This film ran just under 3 hours long which was about 2 hrs and 55 minutes longer than it should have been. The overall acting in this film was horrendous with the actors looking like they had serious cases of bowel malfunctions rather than reactions to their surroundings, and the special effects were only slightly better than what the creators of South Park would have come up with. The CGI was extremely bad with the exception of the Martian War Machines which looked as if they were SFX from decades past, but I was also thankful at the same time because it distracted me from how bad the overall film was. For some reason which I am still not able to ascertain, they opted to use CGI distant shots of horse and buggy footage instead of photographing the actual horse and buggy that they had. Then there were the overuse of superimposing the characters over rear projection and the very bad CGI of the distant shots of soldiers. The Martians themselves were laughable looking barely better than an old Saturday morning cartoon characters, but one scene in particular was probably the worst of the whole film and sticks out in my mind the most, when the War Machines were battling it out with the British Navy. The SFX were laughable and the emotional reactions of the characters were worse than terrible and totally unrealistic to say the very least. Then there's the dialog which was so bad it was absolutely hilarious to listen to them ("Unhand those ladies you Brutes!"). After watching it I looked up the cast to see who these high school drama flunkies were and I found that the majority of them had no previous professional acting experience at all and had more to do with the production of the film, and only a couple of them had at best C movie experience. I could go on, but by now I think that you get the idea. If you rent or purchase this film, do it for the kids ages 7 and under because by today's standards it will insult the intelligence of anybody older. I plan on donating my copy to the local library now, although I should just burn it as a start to eliminating this fiasco out of existence!