Review of Kite (2014) by Jason T — 02 Dec 2014

Well I am not really into anime, the concepts are usually brilliant, but something about the animation doesn't grab me, the only anime which by far distance I remember & completely enjoyed was Akira (1998), maybe that is why I considered watching this film anime based action flick despite the awful ratings it has received, hoping they where a result of the disappointed anime fans & of course the presence of Samuel Jackson.

Boy was I wrong! From beginning to end this movie is horrible! Yes! it was pretty badly written and directed. Generic plot, horrendous acting, poor character development, poor transitions, etc. The sub plots do little to carry the movie along as well.

It is just so slow moving and totally the opposite of exciting, it really took an effort to pay attention to the proceedings. Chuck in some beats music that is meant to make some of the basic parkour based scenes look dramatic with a few wisps of smoke thrown in for added "drama", and you've got a recipe for disappointment.

The action scenes are poorly directed, the fight scenes are excruciatingly slow and very obviously staged (badly) and none of the actors look convincing doing or saying anything. Plus there seemed to be far too many characters of different nationalities for a country which is post apocalyptic.

Even the bad guys come across as being somewhat weak and pathetic - shouldn't actors thrive on playing a really mean villain in a film? The villains don't seem to have any menace at all. The scenery looks really cheap and I really don't know were the director found these terrible actors.

The main actress, India Eisley, is completely mis-cast for an action role. It seems she was trying really hard to imitate Milla Jovovich & Kate Beckinsale, fail! Samuel L. Jackson must have done the movie as a favor to the director because I can't see him reading the script, thinking that it was going to be amazing! and thankfully for him, his role is fairly small - I wonder how many people would have passed this film by had his name not been on the billing? He was on decent, if not epic, form in his limited.

role. On the whole Kite is honestly one of the worst films I have seen in a long time, the film has everything that makes a movie bad, its so bad even the presence of Samuel Jackson could not salvage it from burning in hell!!