Filmmakers often wonder why they get all these one's; there's two reasons... 1) the wannabe critics can't count past one. 2) to offset clearly blatant shill high reviews. I'm going to guess it was the latter for the current two 1's, only because of the original five 10/10's, of which this film is clearly not worthy of. I too would normally avoid any films with shill reviews and automatically give them 1's. But I was bored, and gave this one a chance after the trailer intrigued me, but expecting to turn it off within 20 mins. I didn't.
It's actually one of the better low budget B films I've seen in a while. Short-film actor Patrick Lazzara produced, wrote, directed and also starred in this, his first full length feature film, with only four previous short-film credits. I will say that from all the actors, Lazzara was the most convincing. He reminded me a lot of Donnie Wahlberg's character in Blue Bloods when he had his gun drawn approaching a crime scene. Maybe the others would've been slightly better with a more experienced casting director. Dawn Barber seemed the most inexperienced and unconvincing of them all, whilst Donnie Blankenship held his own, with John Fava and Agostino Bommarito being just way too overboard in many scenes.
Lazzara's directing was surprisingly great, with excellent shots and cinematography. The fade ins and outs did get a little tedious though. The score was surprisingly spot-on, especially for a B film, where it's usually loud, overbearing, constant and unfitting. Lazzara knew when to score and when not to, and made an excellent choice hiring Pietro Milanesi for his music. Lazzara's writing was also impressive, with a very cohesive screenplay that flowed well with flashbacks at the perfect moments. The story was refreshingly original for your typical mob-story genre, with more focus on character-study dramatics than mob shoot-outs. The pacing was a little slow, but bearable in the decent 99 min runtime.
Aside from your typical rookie mistakes and sub-par acting, for Lazzara to wear so many hats as an inexperienced filmmaker, and actually pull off an interesting and captivating film, flawed and all, is still an impressive feat. If you can look past the expected flaws from a new and upcoming filmmaker - and they're not that bad, this is a good one-time watch. It's better than some films I've seen lately from some seasoned filmmakers. It's not a 10, and surely undeserving of 1's, but it is a well earned 7/10 from me, especially considering it's a first feature film from an inexperienced filmmaker.
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