Review of Johnny Virus (2005) by Shawn-Ray M — 14 Dec 2010

The way this movie is written it's essentially 2 movies. The first half seems like a decently budgeted student film, taking place on two sets. It could have been decent had it just been a short film but the writer decided to go on and try to continue a story that, quite honestly, didn't really need to be told. The second half tries to be a full-fledged, low-budget, independent movie. The story tries to present the first half as a sort of prequel to set the story up for the last half, but the last half is where it really falters. It's just not very good.

The sound was one of the biggest problem with this movie, popping in and out and just completely taking me out of the movie. Another major problem was the setting. The movie is supposed to be a 40s-50s era gangster film but it neither looked nor sounded like one. Simply putting people in suits and fedora, and having a tommy gun in a scene doesn't make a setting. The actors didn't talk like they were in the 1940s. The dialog was very stilted and did absolutely nothing to capture the era. It also tried to keep having double crosses that seemed to lack little surprise or emotional punch.

I'll give the filmmakers some credit for trying to make a decent film noir, but they probably need to go back and study the genre a little more closely as they missed several key components. In the end it just came out as a wannabe noir film. I feel they would have been better served to have made a short film out of the first half since that's where the strength (such as it was) of this movie really was. At least that way they could have used it to warrant interest to make a stronger full length that didn't feel so disjointed.