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Londonx54
Reviews
Brestskaya krepost (2010)
About as realistic as the A Team
I came across this film and got a little excited as the reviews were good and I am fascinated by the war on the eastern front. Unfortunately I had to turn the film off after an hour! The combat scenes are chronically unrealistic in my opinion. I know that Russian tactics were meant to be pretty basic at the beginning of the war but every scene seems to involve an infantry charge across open ground. The last scene, before I stopped the film, involved the Russians jumping up from cover and running a good 100 metres at the Germans who also seemed quite happy strolling around in the open whilst under fire. This feels more like 1812 than 1941.
In an air raid at the beginning the film persistently showed mini-explosions occurring 6 feet away from the actors. What are these micro-bombs that only seem to happen in film world? They don't seem to do anything so I'm not sure why the Luftwaffe bother to drop them.
Giallo (2009)
Terrible
This film is awe-inspiringly terrible. A lone detective hunting for a serial killer with the sister of the kidnap-victim in tow. What is this, 1930s policing? How are we possibly meant to buy into this? Is this seriously how the director thinks that murder investigations are conducted in 2009? Please note the great scene where they are sitting in a car chatting whilst she, a member of the public, flicks through the detective's case files checking out photos of victims. Is this considered good police procedure in film world?
The female kidnap-victim makes no attempt to escape from her loosely tied bindings. She lies on the floor of a locked room with her feet and hands tied. In front of her we see a table of torture devices including surgical knives. Why didn't she just stand up, hop over to the table and cut through her ropes? One can only assume that she couldn't really be bothered. Maybe she realised how terrible the film was and wished death upon herself? Anything to release herself from this drivel. I have to say that there were moments as a viewer when I considered plunging a fork into my retinas to rid myself of this film.
Emmanuelle Seigner is a terrible terrible actress. She has been time-warped straight from a bad 1980s TV movie. In fact, remove Adrien Brody from this film and thats what you are left with - a bad 80s TV movie.
And the music. Please! I get it. A low cello sound means bad things might happen. The whole film has been machine-gunned with nondescript classical music.
Adrien. Adrien. What hast thou done. We used to respect the Brody brand. We used to enjoy your films. We used to think you had taste. Now I fear with Giallo and Predator we have lost you forever. What happened Adrien? Trouble paying the mortgage perhaps?