STAND OFF is an atrocious black comedy from Northern Ireland. It's supposedly a spoof of the popular heist genre, featuring hard-knuckle gangsters, a stand-off with police, and various plot intrigues between the characters. It feels as though the guys who wrote it swallowed a whole load of cinema including plenty of Tarantino and then simply tried to emulate it themselves.
The result? An abject failure; STAND OFF is embarrassingly bad, never more so than in the random spaghetti western spoof moment which is excruciating. The characters are underdrawn and I didn't laugh once at any of the supposedly quirky humour. The only thing I can say about this film is that the cast is semi-professional so it's a shame they're wasted in such a production. Brendan Fraser has never looked more desperately out of place although Colm Meaney is reliable as always in a stock part and David O'Hara is effortlessly imposing as the gangster mastermind. Conleth Hill (Varys from GAME OF THRONES) and Tom Hollander cameo.
The result? An abject failure; STAND OFF is embarrassingly bad, never more so than in the random spaghetti western spoof moment which is excruciating. The characters are underdrawn and I didn't laugh once at any of the supposedly quirky humour. The only thing I can say about this film is that the cast is semi-professional so it's a shame they're wasted in such a production. Brendan Fraser has never looked more desperately out of place although Colm Meaney is reliable as always in a stock part and David O'Hara is effortlessly imposing as the gangster mastermind. Conleth Hill (Varys from GAME OF THRONES) and Tom Hollander cameo.