TrueJoshNight Truly Dreadful Film

Curapedi I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

Twilightfa Watch something else. There are very few redeeming qualities to this film.

Stephanie There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

Robert Thorpe The film tries hard to be so good and dramatic, unfortunately with the talent in the cast, the script is a let down. Horrible dialog lends to unbelievable characters. The "BAD FAMILY" in the film really isn't that bad, but they are suppose to be. All they do is line after line of coke, but nothing more. The brothers are arguably the worst written bad guys ever on screen. Zero chemistry between them as brothers and of course the script is just such a let down that, they don't come across and crazed, unthinking criminals who don't give a poo about life, rather idiots who have never been to any school, EVER. The only real good character in the film is Norman Reedus who does actually deliver some pretty awful dialog convincingly. Everyone else is flat. Technically, the sound is horrendous, I don't know what they used but whatever it was was not working, the ADR booth used for the beach shots was not a professional place at all. It all sounded fake and far away from the performance. In closing, I understand what the writer director was going for but he failed. The story is suppose to be about a guy trying to escape his past but we are never told what that past was. We get that the family is a bunch of criminals but in what, we are never told. I get that a son wants a better life, so he leaves. He goes to the beach to start a new life, and does. Then randomly his family shows up with a lame story of how they found him. Not believing it. Then of course the rest is just a bunch nonsense of revenge after revenge for nothing that ultimately ends in an anticlimactic finish. I like the overall story, or I should say, what they were trying to accomplish.

Logic404 What a waste of energy and money. What a waste of what talent there was.Emilio Estevez was completely wasted and mostly unused throughout. Jon Lovitz was very mildly amusing but pointless. Harry Dean Stanton - why bother? And was it just me or can Kari Wuhrer barely act in this one.The story was pretty non-existent and really disjointed. One of my biggest problems was the reaction of the characters to the events that transpired. Like the surf "dudes" giving up their lives every time they were threatened in the last half? How about that you NEVER saw them surf once!! The set-up to some scenes took way to long with not enough pay-off to make us give a damn. Nothing in this "movie" felt really true or genuine.The only good things I can say is some (very little) of the scenery was filmed nicely and a few scenes were mildly interesting. Don't see this when there is so many better pointless movies out there.

vandino1 Matt Palmieri must go to a lot of Hollywood parties or be connected to somebody cool enough to line up this many b-list celebrity performers in one certifiably awful film. Is this a case of "paycheck time" or a case of "Hey, Harry Dean Stanton agreed to do it, why not join the party?" Maybe they all have the same agent who got a call asking for the whole group to do either 'The Surreal Life' or appear in this film. Either way, it's still Surreal Life. Stanton, Denis Leary, Jon Lovitz, Julie Delpy, Kari Wuhrer and Emilio Estevez...... what, no Janice Dickinson or Verne Troyer? Oops, this was made in pre-Surreal Life 1999 and only surfaced recently... like the bones of a corpse washing ashore. My mistake. And anyone else's mistake for watching this. Even back in 1999 the Tarantino copycats had worn out their welcome, but this flimsy tripe is more of a fifth generation carbon copy of a Tarantino rip-off. And even if you watch it for the interesting cast you get cheated. Sure, you get Leary phoning in his usual acerbic performance, but his lines are mostly weak. Then there is Stanton who has ONE scene, and Lovitz, Delpy and Estevez who have little more than that. These should really be uncredited "guest" performances but they're featured prominently on the video cover. The real stars are Vartan, Wuhrer and a bunch of other young actors who mostly posture and yell at each other virtually nose to nose throughout. It's the old game of covering weak dialogue by having the actors shout rather than speak. Ooh, the intensity. And the storyline is so wrong-headed that it seems to flow like a dream spun by idiots. No example of this is more telling than the endless back and forth battle between the low-life brothers and the surfer dudes--the surfers apparently believing, not once, not twice, but even three times, that their besting of low-lifes with GUNS (yet not relieving said low-lifes of their weapons) means the scumbags have learned their lesson and will not RETURN with their GUNS. Oh, why go on...this film is junk and leave it at that.

jimmyd1975 Normally I don't review movies I stopped watching halfway through, but this one is an exception because I watched it in fastforward til the end. I'll say this: Good casting all around, wonderful visual shots of the beach, cliffs, etc. But that's all this movie has to offer. Dull, dull, dull. C'mon scriptwriter, doesn't Tyler have a second memory of his mother?? Why put us through the same shots over and over again?? Do you wanna know why I rented this movie? Because Michael Vartan (Never Been Kissed) was on the cover, and that guy is HOT!! But c'mon Mike, if you're gonna star in a low budget drama/action film and do your usual puppy dog/ smoldering hunk-o-man thing you always do, could you at least have taken off your shirt, even once?? If you're going to do a boring, poorly written beach film, then at least give your female/gay male fans a reason to want to see it. And Mr. Screenwriter, if you're gonna have a good cast working your material, give them something to work with. I mean really. The first half was so DULL I stopped caring altogether. This was a movie where the lead guy was a Montgomery Clift protagonist/ good guy because that's who he is without explanation, and the bad guys are bad just because. It's like the movie was filmed without a script and the director said, "Okay, actors. Be yourselves, and ACTION!" Michael Vartan stood around with nothing to say, looking longingly into the distance, the redneck brothers slugged each other and playfought because that's what rednecks are supposed to do, and Denis Leary tried to say his lines real fast so as to make himself sound witty. The director needed to challenge his actors and the script needed to challenge the production. Routine with stock performances from good actors from better films, this moviegoer gives this film a big fat F. Nothing to see here, folks. Move along, move along.....