Ash & Dust

Just now saw the flick. Rather than getting invested became exhausted by the predictable story. The protagonist escapes from a bullet shot goes on to kill all those responsible. In the end forces a pregnant wife of one of the culprits to shoot him the way he(the culprit) was forced to shoot the protagonist - "The End". Beaten track trodden on millions of times before. Reviewers praising it as a slow burner, I found it a real bummer! God save the real viewers from these fake reviewers!

If you need to understand this film's plot, follow closely, these simple steps. Copy the entire 83 minutes, snag some freeware from the Internet that allows the movie to be played in reverse. Toss some popcorn into the microwave. Delete the file you just created, the popcorn is way better, believe me.

I just saw the poster and thought it was a Hurt Locker. So I tried to take a look and watch, and found myself enjoying watching this movie. It was more fun than what I thought. It wasn't the movie or genre I expected, but I enjoyed it and recommend it.

This feels like another vanity project, with a well worn plot that they actually still manage to mess up.... There is absolutely no depth to any of the Characters, so much so that you do not feel any empathy for anyone. Nothing is explained, and the story goes nowhere, and actively ignores what may have been interesting sub-plots....

25 minutes into the movie and barely anyone talk, the whole thing is so slow that my eyes started to close! Maybe the movie getting better further on or not but its not my kind of chocolate thats for sure.

The stories and backgrounds hidden between the characters were interesting. It was like watching a well-crafted game. However, there were some limitations in directing, and the parts where the actors' performances were not stable are deductible points.

Watching this movie was such a frustrating and ultimately fruitless endeavor. There were so many things going on, very little dialogue to explain it, and not enough of what was going on was interesting enough to keep even the most patient viewer connected. (FYI, I contemplated turning it off at the 20 minute mark, then again at the 40 minute mark.) It is one of those films that aims to be more than what it is, but the talent behind it just isn't cohesive enough and at such different levels, what you ended up getting was a movie that wanted to be and could have been something interesting, but ends up falling flat on its face. I'm not going to go into details about the film itself, but for a story about revenge and why people embark on it, there were maybe 20 lines of dialogue throughout its entire running time. When someone did speak, the acting was often stilted and just plain bad, like someone was reading from a script. The dialogue was simple and had very little nuance, and made the movie that much worse. Perhaps it might have been an even better movie if no one had spoken at all. The two sole high points of the film are the cinematography and the soundtrack. The movie is beautiful, with some great shots of the wilderness and some really dynamic framing. Likewise, the soundtrack was haunting and really pulled you into the events taking place, even when there really wasn't anything going on. Overall, this movie frustrated me, to the point where I wish I hadn't even bothered watching it. It was just a slog to get through, and I'd discourage anyone from even thinking about giving this one a go. Avoid it completely.

A characteristic of this genre film is that the director and actors are somewhat unfamiliar. However, it seems to be discovering newcomers to that extent, and using this as a stepping stone, it seems to be seen in larger films. Wouldn't it be heartbreaking if it were the other way around? A movie with good acting.