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Heist
R1 - America - Echo Bridge Home Entertainment Review written by and copyright: Jeremiah Chin (30th January 2010). |
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The Film
 I thought I had seen it all in this gig, but then I saw “Heist” (2009), no not “Heist” (2001), but “Heist” (2009). No, the other “Heist” (2009), not the short film but the feature length one. Now I’ve seen a horse fly, and I’ve seen Miley Cyrus fly, but I ain’t never reviewed a movie as bad as this. It’s no “The Room” (2003) or “Troll 2” (1990), it’s not even in their league of terribleness. It’s a college film student movie at a mid-level college that has good equipment to loan and a terrible pool people on a school designated actors list to give to a sophomore’s final project. Which is just a complicated way of saying it’s a terribly put together, terribly acted, terribly directed, terribly produced film. Possibly the worst I’ve had to take on. Of course there’s a “Heist” involved, a heist of an armored truck of all things, coordinated by K (Rick Jordan) in order to help repay his brother Erik’s (Erik David) debts to mysterious Luis (Christian Mendez). But this is such a mess of a movie there’s got to be more involved right? Not really. K works with a ragtag gang with unexplained specialties to organize the heist, to the tune of some stock music and bad editing. Complications? Sure there are a few, really contrived and put in the way just for the sake of making a 90 minute runtime. It’s hard to express how terribly put-together this movie is, but I’ll start off with the casting and acting. Intensity in this movie seems to come in two doses, squinting and yelling, just plain yelling. Plenty of scenes are supposed to get more intense and rather than act, they decide to just squint and yell in each others faces. But even when the movie is less intense and people are supposed to be interacting with each other, it’s some more ridiculously bad acting. Rick Jordan’s job as writer/co-director/actor almost seems like an exercise in vanity as the poorly constructed plot revolves around him as do the camera moves. What really helps though is just how bad this script is. There’s some moments of sheer awesomely bad brilliance, like ‘I managed to overlook your shortcomings in the past!’ or ‘Where the f**k you goin’ ‘To get a cup a coffee’ ‘Ya neeed it!’ This is the sort of movie that requires a specific type of humor to enjoy, someone who finds delight in the awful and loves to see the trainwreck take place. Nothing in this movie is funny in the ways that was intended, but rather is just so terribly stupid and bad it becomes comedy. But for an action movie, the most beautifully awful thing about it all is the way it revolves around action and money. Of course it’s nonsensical and of course it’s poorly put-together, but there’s something that gives me tons of joy about watching terribly choreographed fight scenes, with poorly directed gunshots and terrible stock sound effects and some of the worst redubbing I’ve ever seen in a movie. I’m a little dumbfounded how this movie managed to find it’s way onto DVD, it’s the sort of thing that would circle the internet on YouTube with brandings like “worst fight scene ever” or “worst movie dialogue” and better yet “worst sex scene ever.” It definitely doesn’t hold a torch to the awesomely bad giants in movies, but it does have the right degree of terribleness to really make it fun and entertaining in the worst way possible.
Video
Maybe the biggest surprise is the film’s quality, obviously filmed with a reasonably good HD camera and presented in a widescreen 1.78:1 anamorphic aspect ratio that brings an odd quality to the film. It’s not quite film and doesn’t quite have the frame rate of a TV show which adds a little comedy to it all, but in terms of visual style and directing it may be one of the worst I’ve ever seen. Plus the fact that the editing looks like it was either done in camera or in a free program, the good looking digital film goes to waste.
Audio
And here’s where things get hilarious, there’s only one audio track and it’s an English Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo track consisting of some of the worst sound effects and editing I’ve seen. The dubbing sounds absolutely terrible, sometimes lips and audio don’t matchup at all and you can hear the differences from when they redubbed in lines when peoples backs were turned. Plus some of the worst, generic sound effects for people getting punched, it’s hilarious. The terrible sound helps to add to the hilariously bad quality of the film in beautiful ways.
Extras
None. This is the first DVD I’ve seen in years that only has two menu options: "Play" and "Chapters."
Overall
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