Review of Hunt to Kill (2010) by Dan O — 10 Jun 2011

Hunt to Kill - Starring well I'll save that for later.

I will preface this review by saying I picked this movie from Netflix's New Movies section. I thought it was a Bruce Willis flick and I also thought it was called Hard to Kill, not "Hunt to Kill". I typically go to action & adventure movies when I want something that requires very little concentration to watch, usually while I'm doing other things. In this case I was packing.

Typically speaking I'm on the fence about crossover actors. We all know people that are famous for one thing and then decide that for whatever series of circumstances they deserve a chance to act in a movie... I take these people with a grain of salt, but in the instance of WWE wrestlers who decide to stop acting in a ring and go to acting in front of a camera I typically expect that these ring acrobats will be capable of jaw dropping stunts when it comes to the action sequences.

This movie started off in a rock quarry. That told me pretty much everything I could expect from this movie in the first minute of the movie. First off instead of Bruce Willis its Steve Austin. The wrestler. I only know of this guy because of the wrestling geeks I used to work with. So while I'm not expecting a grammy award winning performance I am expecting some pretty kickass action sequences. With these crossover "actors" the best thing a writer can do is give them as few lines as possible and just let the stunt choreographers carry the show.

Two types of movies are shot in rock quarrys. So when I see a movie that has a opening scene in one I know I can expect 1 of two things. A low budget sci-fi movie or a low budget action movie. There are many things that are not to like on this movie. The bad writing, the pleasant to look but really poor actors. The poor camera direction made me actually flinch a couple times. But for everything I didnt like I will say the audio and the lighting where actually really well done. If the DP didnt have his head up his ass, the only thing that would have really stuck out was the script and the acting.

I will give the Director Keoni Waxman credit for shooting this straight to dvd feature on film instead of video, unfortunately the DP made some very questionable calls on lens selection, camera angles and had a appearantly consistently drunk jib operator.

Keeping in mind that action & adventure genre is suppossed to be mindless entertainment. I'm not going to criticize the movie too hard on acting or script or even its technical merits because most people dont notice that stuff. I will however judge it based on action sequences.

When you are a name wrestler and you crossover from acting in a ring to acting on the screen I expect, no no thats not right. I DEMAND that you put on a good fight sequence. Sadly that just wasnt the case here. The action sequences are few and far between. The fight choreography was completly lame and at a point Honestly after seeing the preview of the movie I would not have allowed my name to be in the credits if I was involved with it. How do you take a trained stunt man, someone who has done live action stunts in front of thousands of people and make them look lame? I feel really bad for everyone from stunts department that was involved in this movie.

This movie was a loser on so many fronts that I can only reccomend it to aspiring directors and DP's as an instructional film on what NOT to do when making a film. You dont have to have a big budget, or big name actors or even fancy gear to make a good movie. But when you strike out on so many important levels so terribly, its just sad.

I wouldnt say I hated this movie and it wasnt hard to watch. It really was just a train wreck. Fascinating, morbid and awesome all in 97 minutes. I feel a little uneasy with this because I really wanted to like this movie more than I did. So here is an uneasy 2 stars.