I loved the way everything in this film was shown in a straight forward way rather than over the top. It is sparse in its dialogue, the lighting is straight forward and realistic which goes well with its plain acting and special effects. A welcome change from most films these days where things always happen and look manufactured rather than real.
-Karl
Yeah, for being a low budget film, I thought the effects looked believable.
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Youngblood II: Racki's Revenge
I wouldn't call individual aspects of this film "great" (i.e. acting, directing, script, effects), but I do agree it's a "great story" and a decent film. I emphatically disagree with other threads that claim those aspects were bad. Basically, there's nothing overtly wrong with this movie. All those individual elements were, at worst, above average, and the whole of the film was put together reasonably well. I could complain too. I thought it could of had better music and I saw obvious modern objects in some street scenes (two aspects that don't take a lot of money to fix), but none of the nitpicking, hair-splitting whiners say anything about that.
Some acting was good, some mediocre, but not a single performance was awful(unlike countless female co-stars in Transformer movies or so many other box office hits). Nothing stood out about the directing. There were no extraordinary scenes, but there were also no obvious flaws in the editing or flow of the film and the scenes moved along just fine. It didn't have a Shawshank Redemption script, but it wasn't stupid either. All the characters were well-developed and the lines were believeable. I thought some of the dialogue in the bars, clubs and between Danny and his female co-stars was quite good at times. What do people expect? It's a story about thugs and the main character's #1 quality is his ability to say nothing at the right time. To me the Godfather movies are unrealistic. They might have airtight scripts and acting, but they are overly-dramatic and hyped. Everyone is so hung up on hollywood's soap opera-like drama that they can't handle a film that shoots straight and doesn't use "tricks" and excessive drama to fill the void hollywood has created in our minds.
As for effects - some of the punches weren't believable, but others were great. Some explosion effects and filming techniques were below today's standards, but I got the impression some of it (like lighting, etc.) was meant for effect - to give it more of that 70s feel. Considering the style of filming, the period of the story, and the likely low-budget, I've seen much worse from films with big budgets, high expectations, and demanding futuristic topics. Need I remind you of Hulk, Jackson's King Kong, or Burton's Planet of the Apes. I'm sure I could think of many more. If that's what big budgets, or top actors and directors gets you then I'll take a film like Kill the Irishman any day.
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