Armed and Deadly (2011)

Absolutely Fantastic

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

In 1994 Janis is in military intelligence and has sat behind a desk. But she is happier being assigned to Kuwait. Her first job: investigate a supposedly deserted area, since there are rumors Saddam Hussein will invade again, as he did four years earlier. Janis takes Bernie Schwartz with her. The area is not deserted, and the two find evidence something is going on. Then five Middle Eastern men show up and Bernie is shot. To stay alive, Janis has to shoot the others. She is assured all five are dead, but we have seen that Kadir was only faking.Meanwhile, Janis has flashbacks to the time her twin brother Jamey threatened to kill their parents and then did it.For four months, Janis is in a military hospital because of what happened. Only Captain Rogers cares enough to visit, and while a romance is possible, he disappears.Ten years later in Sarasota, Florida, Janis is a free-lance photographer. She can't work for any company, as much as they want her to because she is so good, because she needs to be free. Looking like Heather Locklear and wearing a tank top, shorts and flip-flops, she is taking photos for the Oak Club's brochures. She will dress more professionally (though still casually) later, but we will get to see more of her in sexy outfits.Carol is a perky Texas native in charge of making sure Janis does her job. She's really nice and they become friends, later meeting at a bar where Boomer is bartender. He's quite a character.Janis is nearly hit by a red SUV several times. She suspects her brother, who is up for parole and vowed revenge after she testified against him. Though we know who it could be. Carol, still unaware of Janis' military background, sees Janis may need help and refers her to a friend Diane who is a psychologist. Given what Janis went through, that may be a good idea.Janis gets another job involving clown statues. But one of those clowns isn't a statue ...After this terrifying experience, Carol calls on her ex Abe, a cop. Something isn't quite right. Could Janis be imagining things? It is true that Jamey is out to get his sister, and we do see the bumbling idiots Mickey, and the other guy whose name I don't remember, he has put in charge of this. But what we believe may not be the truth.Meanwhile, Janis has other jobs which give us more reasons to enjoy the movie. Two are at zoos, one of which has flamingos (at least I think they are) but also lots of pretty trees. There is another zoo specializing in big cats. And a park with a statue resembling the famous photo of a sailor kissing a woman after World War II.And the threats just keep coming. We are left guessing until the end. Will Janis get out of this mess unharmed?No, this movie, despite its brief celebration of our military, had nothing to do with The Fourth, but it was appropriate to watch on that day. It just happened to be one I had recorded months ago.This is a pretty good movie, but nothing that special. What makes it work for me is that there are just enough pleasant scenes mixed in with all the seriousness, and plenty of comedy, even in Kuwait. And occasional action and excitement. Especially toward the end.You have to like Lisa Varga as Janis if for no other reason than her looks, but of course the character is tough and intelligent yet likable and mostly well-adjusted despite what she has been through.The real standout performer is Ken Stellingwerf as Jamey. When he explains why he is in prison, you could call him demented or darkly comic. And he has more scenes like that. And he must deal with the Three Stooges, who point out that there are only two of them, so how could they be three? I won't say the stooges are necessarily good actors but they are entertaining.Toni Ann Rossi as Carol and Alan Roberts as Boomer also impress.And David Mackey as Captain Rogers. We will see more of him.This is not a family film, though I found it curious that it had a TV-PG rating with the brutal violence in a few scenes. But the fact is there isn't that much actual violence.I think it's worth seeing.

There are movies where you find yourself trying to preserve your dignity or sanity by fast forwarding to escape the absurd plot, bad acting or ridiculous dialogue and then there are movies that are so so bad that skipping every ten minutes and then checking the storyline for a minute on the prayerful hope it was just a mistake and it's better than you thought. Well, it took less than five minutes into the movie to begin skipping and there was no relief. The story is about some well-endowed female model type military intelligence officer who happens to be in Kuwait in the 90s and suddenly does a double pistol Western shoot out with a bunch of well armed bad people one of whom survives and decides to come after her many years later when she's a civilian photographer in Florida. Stupid improbable storyline really shallow acting from actors with mostly little/no experience except a few TV series/movies. A lot of limited dialogue with read the teleprompter pauses where you wait for the next edited canned response. Cheap production with a really badly fabricated Arab hut with abandoned car in front - very stereotyped. Cheap echoing audio with production budget not allowing for subtitles.

First off, I usually don't like low budget movies, but I was intrigued by the cover art. The first 15 minutes or so (not to give anything away) has to do with Janis' tour of duty in the army. I was actually ready to stop the movie because of the low budget scenery, but the acting really held me. From there we move to Florida in the present day where Janis is now a professional photographer, and we are introduced to her brother, who, though still in prison, is trying to kill her (well, scare her for now). I really wish I could get in to her relationship with Carol, but there are so many plot twists and turns that no matter what I say, I'll give something away. All I can say is: SEE THIS MOVIE!!! You will not believe how this ends, or how they got there! Definitely a MUST SEE!!!

I caught this film at the 2010 Sarasota film festival. While watching, I definitely got the sense that I was looking at an unfinished film, performed by terrible actors, and based on the first draft of a script that tries so hard to jam in all the clichés of the genre that it leaves no room for anything else.To start off with, the film LOOKS bad. We were told that the film was shot on an expensive digital video camera designed to give it a more film-like look. That may be, but the end result was something that looked nothing at all like a Hollywood movie... heck I've seen student films that look more like a movie than this. Maybe it was the bad lighting, maybe it was the frame-rate, but something made it look like the film was shot on an expensive home video camera. This immediately gave the sense that we were watching actors, not characters.The acting certainly didn't help with that feeling. It was like watching kids reciting lines. I say with no hyperbole that there isn't a single performance in the film that even approached good acting. Right from the beginning we're treated to one actor that is so bad that you cringe at his every line. You welcome the fact that he dies so early in the film, but regret that everybody else sticks around for the next 90 minutes. I say this not too pick on them. It could very well be the fault of the director, or more likely the writer.Half of bad acting is bad writing, and this script stands in a category of its own. It's clear that no thought whatsoever was put into characters. Early on, the main character explains that she was an English major... which goes a long way toward explaining why she's a... photographer. The real reason she was a photographer is so that they could visit all the "cool" places in Sarasota in long scenes that did little to develop the characters or advance the plot. Why were these scenes in there? Because Sarasota is cool I guess. Don't you want to see Sarasota?The dialogue is also cringe-worthy, clunky, and forced. This may be in part due to the bad acting, but it's difficult to picture even Tom Hanks delivering some of these lines convincingly. Later in the film, the protagonist meets a middle-aged white guy that speaks perfect English, but we're told that he's actually an Arab terrorist that had reconstructive surgery... uh huh. There's suspension of disbelief, there's checking your brains at the door, and then there's this movie.A bad movie can still be watchable if it's quickly paced, but this film just plods. We spend most of the film waiting for action and suspense that never really fully come, and when they do, our interests have long since disappeared. The fight and action sequences are so poorly directed that they wouldn't be any fun to watch anyway, so I guess it doesn't matter.This could have all been salvageable if they were going for a high camp factor, but it just took itself too seriously. In festivals, the audience usually tries to be polite about laughing at a bad film because the filmmakers are present, but by the end of my screening the audience couldn't hold it in any more. The first thing the director said in the Q and A was that he didn't know the film was a comedy, and mistakenly thought that the audience was laughing for good reasons. In many ways the film is reminiscent of Tommy Wiseau's cult hit The Room, but the pacing is too slow to excel to such levels of of accidental comedy. All the factors are in place however, and if they lose about 40 minutes off the run time, and spread the word-of- mouth, it might just be the next "The Room." As it stands however, the film is going to have no appeal whatsoever outside of Sarasota.The reason I felt the need to write this review is that I felt swindled into seeing it. In the film guide, it had a pretty interesting description, and the trailer does a great job of making it look watchable. In fact, there were four screenings which sold out! (although I doubt that would have happened if half the audience didn't work on or know somebody that worked on the film) I'm pretty open to films of all kinds, even amateur ones, but this one clearly had a budget that exceeded what you would expect from amateurs. Watching this was like watching money being fed to cows, and being processed into crap. Why didn't they hire a director with some experience? Pay someone to revamp the script? Or find actors that could give a convincing performance? I guess then they wouldn't be able to afford the fancy camera and superfluous helicopter shot. I write this review in hopes that I might prevent one person from making the same mistake I did... spending good money to waste 2 hours of their lives.