The Death and Life of Bobby Z (2007)

Best movie of this year hands down!

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

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.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

I was toggling back & forth between the Wisconsin Badgers Football season opener & this movie on DVR AND IT WAS COMPELLING ENOUGH that for awhile I forgot to flip back to the game!!! So obviously I have no idea why this audience-tested badly or why people think Paul Walker can't act. Plus he's got a great cast to back him up...The mystery of why this was going down hooked me early & I cared about what happened to these people (at least the good guys) For the girl-watchers out there ~ Olivia Wild is jaw-droppingly GORGEOUS!! I Can't believe I've seen movies with her in them before & not noticed!!! Definitely worth the rental price if you have to go that route.

To see Thirteen (Olivia Wilde) from House makes the movie a "must-see" all by itself. But there is much more promise in this film with action star Paul Walker, and the ever popular Laurence Fishburne.Walker is playing this drug dealer and is trying to get Fishburne's partner back. You know, what can go wrong, will go wrong. Now, he is on his own.The name of the game here is action. From the first scene, we see Tim/Bobby (Walker) getting in trouble, and it never stops. After an exciting horse/motorcycle chase, he takes off with his (Bobby's) son. He has the feds, the drug lords, and a biker gang after him. Not a good bet to survive, but he is an ex-Marine. Never bet against the Marines.Don't expect anything more than fast action and you will not be disappointed.Joaquim de Almeida, who you should remember as Bucho in Desperado, is the bad guy here.I can forgive anything director John Herzfeld does in this film as I am forever grateful for his introduction of the hot Charlize Theron in 2 Days in the Valley.

For a seemingly low budget film, Bobby Z wasn't too bad. Moves pretty quickly, but with a weak storyline and plot, it is clear why it was a straight to DVD feature. Paul Walker does a decent job with a character that an Actor won't be able to do much with, except go with the flow. No real surprises, or twists and turns, just straight to the point B rated action. Actually has some pretty good fighting sequences and shoot outs. Laurence Fishburne is surprisingly cast as a supporting with a weak performance, mainly due to the script and content and possibly direction as well. Bobby Z is definitely a good B movie, with a rating of 5 overall considering everything listed above. All in all, this film is definitely worth watching if you're just chillin' with 97 minutes to spare. And Paul Walker is not nearly as bad an Actor as everyone tries to make him out to be. Have fun.

This film is designed to appeal to a particular audience, the nature of which can be deduced from the standard of vocabulary, grammar and punctuation in most of the previous reports. (Those little tadpole like things are commas by the way.) The fact that many of them don't find it convincing despite their limited film viewing experience should be taken as a warning by the more discerning film critics amongst you. Comparing Paul Walker to Jean Claude Van Damme may seem a tad harsh at this stage in his career but if he wants to avoid the same level of career it might be an idea to employ someone else to pick film roles for him. Maybe he could "go halves" with Fishbourne who seems to be having a "blip" at the moment. I've no idea what he's doing in this. I like a good action movie as much as anyone and I've certainly nothing against excessively pretty people escaping from tough situations with never a facial blemish. But I wasn't quite convinced the cast and crew of this weren't taking it more seriously than perhaps, given subsequent reviews, they'd like us to think.