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Reviews
Red Faction: Origins (2011)
Good game movie and a good syfy movie
While not strictly faithful to the game its still close enough to be relevant(think Dune movies vs. Books) and captures the theme of the games pretty well. And its not as if the games have such a fantastic story to begin with, at least not the newer titles.
This movie has some great actors from US and UK sci-fi shows and they all do a pretty good job. Certainly you will have seen them all put on better performances but they are all capable actors. The story was pretty good although it would have been just as good a movie set during the time frame of the games and opened up a potential franchise of decent TV movies or miniseries.
Certainly worth watching for fans of the game and its a great example that just because its a game doesn't mean the movie has to suck. Yes I am talking to you Herr Boll. And as a standalone movie it is brilliant even better considering it is a TV movie. And its by far the best syfy movie I have seen in a long time if ever and if it had more budget it could certainly have had a successful theatre release.
A solid movie and an excellent watch, its pretty much a 6 but I gave it a 7 for being an example of a game adaptation done right and some favourite actors having good parts.
Far Cry (2008)
Better than bloodrayne at least
One of Bolls better attempts. Just shows that if you do something long enough you have to improve just by chance. It is still not good but it is at least watchable which is an improvement over the bloodrayne. The main difference between Bloodrayne and FarCry really is that the story from Farcry wasn't the games strong point whereas Bloodrayne had a strong story and thus Boll had more chance to mess it up.
The action in this movie is actually fairly good. Occasionally a touch overdone but in a good way and worth a watch just for that.
Acting wise it was pretty decent. Most of the actors are pretty good but you can tell they aren't taking it seriously based on comparisons with other performances. But the lighter mood this gives to the film actually helps.
While I think sticking a little bit closer to the story of the game might have made for a slightly better film the changes made are pretty practical and not big enough to make a difference. Especially given the plot of the game was hardly Oscar winning just a vehicle for FPS carnage. Would have liked it set in the Jungle as that was a pretty integral part of the game but Canada doesn't have a great deal of Jungle and it is at least set in a kind of rainforest.
Why Boll feels the need to change already professionally scripted and directed game plots I don't know but he does. And until he starts letting the source material speak through his adaptations will always be lacking. Watch the film for a laugh its good for that and maybe for watching during a party as drinking party fodder.
The Breed (2001)
decent
Pretty good film not the best production values but I've seen allot worse, its the brazil of vampire movies although its not really a vampire movie, vampires are used to emphasise the point the film is more about race and sectarianism. The vampire elements are fairly good though done better than most proper vampire films it could have done with some better camera work and make up it kind of went for the brazil look but did it with a little more realism than it should have so it just came off wrong, they should have made it more realistic or less realistic they tried to go half way in between and it doesn't work as well.
All in all good film, as long as you don't expect it as a vampire film its not bad at all.