MamaGravity good back-story, and good acting

Sexyloutak Absolutely the worst movie.

ActuallyGlimmer The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

Jenna Walter The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

Robert Thorpe The film tries hard to be so good and dramatic, unfortunately with the talent in the cast, the script is a let down. Horrible dialog lends to unbelievable characters. The "BAD FAMILY" in the film really isn't that bad, but they are suppose to be. All they do is line after line of coke, but nothing more. The brothers are arguably the worst written bad guys ever on screen. Zero chemistry between them as brothers and of course the script is just such a let down that, they don't come across and crazed, unthinking criminals who don't give a poo about life, rather idiots who have never been to any school, EVER. The only real good character in the film is Norman Reedus who does actually deliver some pretty awful dialog convincingly. Everyone else is flat. Technically, the sound is horrendous, I don't know what they used but whatever it was was not working, the ADR booth used for the beach shots was not a professional place at all. It all sounded fake and far away from the performance. In closing, I understand what the writer director was going for but he failed. The story is suppose to be about a guy trying to escape his past but we are never told what that past was. We get that the family is a bunch of criminals but in what, we are never told. I get that a son wants a better life, so he leaves. He goes to the beach to start a new life, and does. Then randomly his family shows up with a lame story of how they found him. Not believing it. Then of course the rest is just a bunch nonsense of revenge after revenge for nothing that ultimately ends in an anticlimactic finish. I like the overall story, or I should say, what they were trying to accomplish.

vandino1 Matt Palmieri must go to a lot of Hollywood parties or be connected to somebody cool enough to line up this many b-list celebrity performers in one certifiably awful film. Is this a case of "paycheck time" or a case of "Hey, Harry Dean Stanton agreed to do it, why not join the party?" Maybe they all have the same agent who got a call asking for the whole group to do either 'The Surreal Life' or appear in this film. Either way, it's still Surreal Life. Stanton, Denis Leary, Jon Lovitz, Julie Delpy, Kari Wuhrer and Emilio Estevez...... what, no Janice Dickinson or Verne Troyer? Oops, this was made in pre-Surreal Life 1999 and only surfaced recently... like the bones of a corpse washing ashore. My mistake. And anyone else's mistake for watching this. Even back in 1999 the Tarantino copycats had worn out their welcome, but this flimsy tripe is more of a fifth generation carbon copy of a Tarantino rip-off. And even if you watch it for the interesting cast you get cheated. Sure, you get Leary phoning in his usual acerbic performance, but his lines are mostly weak. Then there is Stanton who has ONE scene, and Lovitz, Delpy and Estevez who have little more than that. These should really be uncredited "guest" performances but they're featured prominently on the video cover. The real stars are Vartan, Wuhrer and a bunch of other young actors who mostly posture and yell at each other virtually nose to nose throughout. It's the old game of covering weak dialogue by having the actors shout rather than speak. Ooh, the intensity. And the storyline is so wrong-headed that it seems to flow like a dream spun by idiots. No example of this is more telling than the endless back and forth battle between the low-life brothers and the surfer dudes--the surfers apparently believing, not once, not twice, but even three times, that their besting of low-lifes with GUNS (yet not relieving said low-lifes of their weapons) means the scumbags have learned their lesson and will not RETURN with their GUNS. Oh, why go on...this film is junk and leave it at that.

sol1218 ****SPOILERS**** The Briggs family coming together for the first time in over 20 years to attend the funeral and have the will of the mother Marina, Kayle Martin, read is a very uneasy experience for Tyler, Michael Vartan. Having been abandoned by his father Gus, Marshall Bell, when he was an infant Tyler grew up only with his mother Marina and felt no real ties to Gus or his two step-brothers Barker & Hardy,Rodney Eastman & John Hawkes. Who were not only beer guzzling coke heads but also very ill-mannered and an embarrassment to him every time he was with them.Tyler also wasn't too fond of Gus's good friend and travel companion "Boston" Teddy, Denis Leary. Who's obsession with the Kennedy clan of Hyannis-Port MA. as well as John F. Kennedy's sexual exploits, in and out of the White House that even at times got to Gus. Marina left her son Tyler everything that she had but Tyler in a show of good faith only took the White 1972 Ford LTD and a photo album and left everything else, the house and $6,000.00, to his father Gus. Tyler then took off for the coast to where Marina was born and raised to get away from the "Family" and have some very needed peace and quite. Striking up a friendship with Jack, Norman Reedus, and his friends Max Andy & Trip, Bodhi Elfman Powers Simmons & Emilio Estevez, a bunch of local beach boys Tyler got to stay at the Higgins home on the beach as a handyman. It there that he met and fell in love with Jack's sister Sandy, Kari Wuhrer, who just came home for the summer from school.Life was good for Tyler with a sweet and loving girlfriend and new set of friends a job and a place to live until one morning "They" came to town, Gus Teddy Baker & Hardy, and everything went downhill after that. Drinking beer and hard booze as well as smoking pot and snorting coke the quartet, mostly Baker & Hardy, made life miserable not only for Tyler but everyone else in town. The brothers finding Sandy alone in the Higgins house, where Tyler was living in, tried to rape her only to be stopped by Gus & Teddy. When Sandy's brother Jack found out that those who tried to rape his sister were Tyler's step-brothers Baker & Hardy he and some of his friends went to the motel where they stayed with Gus & Teddy. Finding them drunk and stoned on coke Jack worked them over leaving them black and blue and out cold. This led to Baker and Hardy the next day attacking Jack who was alone on the beach and just when they were about to kill him they got the stuffings knocked out them by Jack's friend Trip with his homemade baseball bat.Planing to get even with Jack for what happened to them on the beach, for some reason they weren't interested or couldn't find Trip, Baker & Hardy kidnapped and tortured Jack's friend Max. Jack and his friend Andy tried to come to his rescue only to be kidnapped themselves by the brothers and forced to walk the plank on the pier by the Pacific Ocean. Jack & Andy turned the tables on the duo by fighting them off and having all four of them fall down into the water. Baker & Hardy being drunk and on drugs and also not knowing how to swim drowned. The brothers father angered at what happened to them goes out, against Teddy's advice, looking for Jack only to have Jack show up outside his motel room, with Sandy trying to stop him, and rubbed it in about what happened to Gus' sons! Which was really stupid as well as dangerous on Jack's part. Gus chasing both Jack and Sandy down to the beach and hitting Jack with a bullet from his gun in the leg is then finally tackled by Tyler who puts some sense into his head. Telling Gus that killing Jack won't bring Baker & Hardy back but only destroy his life as well. Interesting little movie that tries to make a point and does about life love hate revenge and finally acceptance. The film will never make the IMDb top 250 but at the same time "Sand" will never make the IMDb bottom 100 either.

jimmyd1975 Normally I don't review movies I stopped watching halfway through, but this one is an exception because I watched it in fastforward til the end. I'll say this: Good casting all around, wonderful visual shots of the beach, cliffs, etc. But that's all this movie has to offer. Dull, dull, dull. C'mon scriptwriter, doesn't Tyler have a second memory of his mother?? Why put us through the same shots over and over again?? Do you wanna know why I rented this movie? Because Michael Vartan (Never Been Kissed) was on the cover, and that guy is HOT!! But c'mon Mike, if you're gonna star in a low budget drama/action film and do your usual puppy dog/ smoldering hunk-o-man thing you always do, could you at least have taken off your shirt, even once?? If you're going to do a boring, poorly written beach film, then at least give your female/gay male fans a reason to want to see it. And Mr. Screenwriter, if you're gonna have a good cast working your material, give them something to work with. I mean really. The first half was so DULL I stopped caring altogether. This was a movie where the lead guy was a Montgomery Clift protagonist/ good guy because that's who he is without explanation, and the bad guys are bad just because. It's like the movie was filmed without a script and the director said, "Okay, actors. Be yourselves, and ACTION!" Michael Vartan stood around with nothing to say, looking longingly into the distance, the redneck brothers slugged each other and playfought because that's what rednecks are supposed to do, and Denis Leary tried to say his lines real fast so as to make himself sound witty. The director needed to challenge his actors and the script needed to challenge the production. Routine with stock performances from good actors from better films, this moviegoer gives this film a big fat F. Nothing to see here, folks. Move along, move along.....