Cleveronix A different way of telling a story

BallWubba Wow! What a bizarre film! Unfortunately the few funny moments there were were quite overshadowed by it's completely weird and random vibe throughout.

InformationRap This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

Marva It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

Paul Andrews A Better Way to Die starts in Chicago where a cop named Boomer (writer & director Scott Wiper) witnesses the murder of his partner Carlos (Carmen Argenziano) during an undercover operation, he decides to leave both Chicago & the force & head out to the sticks to be with Kelly (Natasha Henstridge) the woman he loves. En route he finds himself dodging bullets & fighting for his life when he is mistaken for special agent Harrison James (Jefferson Moore) who the mob wants because of a computer chip with informant information on it & the Government wants him because of, well a computer chip with informant information on it. Seemingly everyone wants him dead as he tries to work out a solution to the situation he finds himself in...Staring, written & directed by Scott Wiper this wasn't anywhere near as bad as I was fearing, in fact I'd go as far as to say it's a fun little action flick without ever being spectacular. The somewhat predictable & often routine action thriller script doesn't take itself too seriously & is fairly light hearted in tone, the character's are decent & the dialogue is alright even though it resorts to constant use of profanity & bad language on occasion. It moves along at a brisk pace & is never boring although the action scenes are somewhat repetitive & are a little low key, don't expect car chases & explosions every five minutes because you will be disappointed if you do. My main problem with A Better Way to Die is that every time it starts to get good the pace slackens & it never quite reaches the dizzy heights of greatness, every time it starts to get good the scene just fizzles out into nothing. The fight in the burning barn at the end & the shoot-outs are average action sequences rather than great ones & as a consequence A Better Way to Die is a touch forgettable, it's a good solid film which you can sit down in front of if it's on TV for free & waste 100 odd minutes in it's company happily enough but by the next morning you'll probably have forgotten all about it & I certainly don't think it's worth spending a lot of money on buying the DVD.Director Wiper does a fine job here, it looks pretty nice & although the action scenes are distinctly average they are well shot & choreographed. It's just a shame about some of the poor editing during the shoot-outs, was this cut to get an 'R' rating? Is that why some of the shoot-outs look so choppy? Those outside the UK will have no idea what I'm talking about but while looking at the credits I noticed one of the producers was named Graham Taylor, I can assure everyone that it's a different Graham Taylor to the ex-manager of Watford, Aston Villa, Wolverhampton Wanderers & the Graham Taylor who had a disastrous time in charge of England when The Sun likened him to a Turnip when they superimposed his face on one of the vegetables all over their paper after we lost to Sweeden! Swedes 2, Turnips 1 was the headline... Still, at least us England fans can look back on it & laugh now, then again maybe not.Technically the film is fine, it looks nice enough with decent cinematography & production values. The action sequences could have used beefing up a bit, I mean one blown up car & a blown up shed isn't much to get that excited about. The acting is fine, although there are some fairly experienced names in the cast the likes of Lou Diamond Phillips, Natasha Henstridge & Joe Pantoliano they have very little screen time & are more cameo appearances than anything else.A Better Way to Die is a decent little action film, it's light hearted & has decent character's & an OK story but it didn't quite reach the heights of greatness for me I'm afraid. It's also rather predictable at times & nothing that we haven't seen before. If you can catch it on TV for free then go ahead but don't spend good money on it. Good but not great.

TBJCSKCNRRQTreviews Scott Wiper. When I first heard his name, I immediately thought of it as one of those I have on my mental 'avoid all works by'-list. Then I looked him up, and found out that I remembered his name from the writing credit for the truly awful film, The Last Marshall. Being the forgiving guy that I am, I thought, "what the hey, he only wrote that horrendous piece of trash, maybe a film directed by him won't be as bad." Well, I was partly right. It's not as bad, but it is pretty bad. The plot makes no sense on any conceivable level. To give a quick summary, bearing in mind that I didn't pay much attention to the first ten minutes of the film(which seemed to make no sense and have no clear connection to the remaining 80, but maybe that's just me) and little to no attention to the last 15-20, it seemed to be about some guy who disappears never to be seen again, and the rest of the film has a bunch of people looking for him. The plot goes from unlikely event to unlikely event, and it's going to take all of your suspension of disbelief to swallow even half of this stuff. I'll give you two quick examples: At one point, a character has to hide for some hours... so he does what any of us would do... he climbs down a toilet. Now, after those hours have passed, he emerges, and takes a deep breath. So, we're basically supposed to believe he somehow could hold his breath for that long? Another point is when the villains throw not one, not two, but three grenades right after each other. And at no other point in the movie do we even get a hint that they might have anything other than guns. Seriously, those three grenades just rolling into frame... that was a moment of(what I suspect is unintentional) hilarity. I can't imagine someone seeing that scene and not laughing, at least a little. Then there's the repetitiveness, the lack of imagination displayed in the writing. Several points in action scenes have tension being broken by the main characters damn wristwatch beeping. Turn the bloody thing off; that's what any normal person would do. One guy seems to get shot over and over without ever dying or even coming to serious harm. The acting is pretty bad most of the time, and it's clear that most of the casting was done based on physical appearance rather than acting talent(made evident by how small a part Joe Pantoliano has, even though he's easily the most talented person involved in the project). The cinematography has its moments, but mostly it's just dreadful. Half of the action is nearly impossible to make out, as there are too few 'cover-shots'(meaning, we don't see the movement, we see the beginning and/or the end result, but not the action itself) and half of the stuff is done with hand-held camera and in long takes, clearly showing the pure laziness of Mr. Wiper. The action is nearly constant, but about as unrealistic as the plot. We don't really connect with any of the characters, and by the end of the film, we just don't care anymore. Too many lazy stereotypes in the place of actual characters and too many plot holes. The dialog varies, but the majority of it is poor. There's really nothing memorable or worthwhile in this film, and most people should just skip it. I recommend it only to die-hard fans of action flicks. 6/10

JamieWJackson Nothing particularly unique about this movie, but it held my attention all the way through. Solid acting, direction, reasonably interesting story, good cast of characters; about the only complaint I would make is that I always felt like I was missing something. That's not specific enough to be of much use, I suppose, but it's as close as I can get to verbalizing my complaint. I give this one 6/10; watch it if you don't have anything else to do.

casey_choas66 Finally someone is thinking about all those people who miss endless gun battles and loads of unlimited amunition from the days of Rambo 3, Commando and Desperado. This story of mistaken identity doesn't deliver much in the story or acting departments but the never ending shoot-outs and big explosions all but make up for it. This is the kind of movie that you just kick back and enjoy, no thinking required. Boy I sure do miss movies like this. Maybe it's just me but I sure do get a kick out of the dialouge in this film "Why don't we forgive, try to forget and share the f**king truck". I live for lines like that in action movies. This movie is a no brainer and I wouldn't have enjoyed it any other way, all action fans take note this movie will give you what you have been missing all these years.