title : Top Movies - Standoff Movie Review (Spoiler Free) - Movie Reviews Sites
Link : Top Movies - Standoff Movie Review (Spoiler Free) - Movie Reviews Sites
Top Movies - Standoff Movie Review (Spoiler Free) - Movie Reviews Sites
article2016 Reviews,Much talking but no suspense. Thomas Jane and Laurence Fishburne might be pointing guns at each other, but this thriller is nothing more than a dud.
Genre: ThrillerDirector: Adam Alleca
Cast: Thomas Jane, Laurence Fishburne, Ella Ballentine, Jim Watson, Joanna Douglas & John Trench.
Run Time: 86 min.
US Release: 26 February 2016
UK Release: 04 January 2016
German Release: 26 February 2016 (Direct-to-Video)
Standoff is Adam Alleca’s directorial debut and stars Laurence Fishburne and Thomas Jane in the lead roles. It was supposed to be released in theatres across the UK and US (I do not know if it did), but came as a direct-to-video release in Germany for good reason. While this B-movie thriller does deliver what its title promises, it is not exactly what I would account for as being suspenseful or remotely interesting and that’s a shame because it did show potential, but the messy script and the moments of nothingness dragged Standoff off to incredible boredom.
The story focuses on Carter (Jane), a lonely and broken man living in the midst of no-where in a remote American town. While pitying himself and getting drunk, he hears screams for help of a little girl (Ballentine), who is quickly approaching his front-porch. Carter stops her and is about to ask if she’s all right, when a man in a black balaclava (Fishburne) appears from nowhere and starts shooting at them. Carter grabs his shotgun and Bird (the nickname of the young girl) and runs into the house, up the first floor, where he sits on the landing ready to defend the girl. The man in black enters the ground floor of the house and a standoff ensues.
There were several factors that made me decide to go and rent this movie; first of all, I find films that take place in one location intriguing because it demands a good storytelling, good dialogue, good performances and good camera work by everyone involved, to keep the plot from going flat. Movies such as Phone Booth and this year’s The Hateful Eight prove that they can be well executed and popular. Standoff though, suffers from a weak script with dull and repetitive dialogue and scrambles it’s potential to become one of the most intriguing B-movies of this year.
While Jane and Fishburne give some of their best performances in this underachieving thriller, the badly scripted dialogue is setting their efforts back. Alleca tried to recreate a suspenseful cat and mouse game with psychological warfare talks, but what we obtained was a dull and uncreative repetition of the words “f**k”, “a**hole”, “dips**t”, “motherf**ker” and other profane cursing. Between the back and forth insults, we get treated with long and still shots of the house while the three characters in play take a nap to recover from the “tense” yelling and insulting, which leads to painful boringness.
On top of that we get treated with some glimpses of Carter’s past, which suggests he might have had a family of his own in the past and left him due to errors he committed. Those flashbacks miserably try to build up an emotional connection between Carter and the audience, as well as to give the plot a reason to why Thomas Jane’s character is trying to protect the little girl from Fishburne’s hitman.
While Jane and Fishburne give some of their best performances in this underachieving thriller, the badly scripted dialogue is setting their efforts back. Alleca tried to recreate a suspenseful cat and mouse game with psychological warfare talks, but what we obtained was a dull and uncreative repetition of the words “f**k”, “a**hole”, “dips**t”, “motherf**ker” and other profane cursing. Between the back and forth insults, we get treated with long and still shots of the house while the three characters in play take a nap to recover from the “tense” yelling and insulting, which leads to painful boringness.
On top of that we get treated with some glimpses of Carter’s past, which suggests he might have had a family of his own in the past and left him due to errors he committed. Those flashbacks miserably try to build up an emotional connection between Carter and the audience, as well as to give the plot a reason to why Thomas Jane’s character is trying to protect the little girl from Fishburne’s hitman.
It is hard to feel sympathy with the persona of Bird, played by the young actress Ella Ballentine, as her past is just brushed by and her thoughts and character barely explored. The function of the girl is clear; to give Carter a reason to keep on living, but it doesn’t omit to the viewer the much-needed emotion to care for her, as she is hardly represented in the film.
The cinematography in this film is nothing out of the ordinary. Alleca used close-ups on insignificant objects and tried to buy time during the "quiet scenes", by filming around the house to show us some of Carter’s past. The intriguing shots had been used during the beginning of the movie, when we saw Laurence Fishburne’s over-the-top shootout, through the lens of Bird’s 35mm camera.
Verdict: In the end, this thriller is nothing else than a dull and uninspired B-movie that blew it’s potential. It could have made use of real psychologically challenging and threatening dialogue, but instead director and writer Adam Alleca created a confrontation in which Thomas Jane and Laurence Fishburne yell and insult each other. The third character and trigger for this situation is not explored at all and thus fails to create the much-needed sympathy for the characters of Carter and Bird. Standoff is one of the worst films I have seen this year so far, and I don’t recommend you go see this movie, at all! I will give Standoff a 4 out of 10.
My next review will follow tomorrow and is on Florian Gallenberger’s Colonia, starring Emma Watson, Daniel Brühl and Michael Nyqvist. Thank you very much for reading and if you found this review helpful, make sure to share it with friends and family.
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