Shooting Gallery

My chief complaint is that there are no captions, so I'm only catching bits and pieces of the movie. The names are already killing me. Jezebel... Jericho... Is this pool or 'Children of the Corn'?

The acting as a whole was atrocious. Was there even a director on the set? The accents and dialogue are hilarious. All I hear is "sisal, sisal, sisal". I have never in my life heard anyone talk like this in any pool hall I've ever been in. The special features said the slang was 30% made up by the movie makers - try 90% and the rest they got wrong. Like what is all this "tribe" talk? Nice tattoos, by the way. So they get branded. With eight-balls, no less. Way to hustle there, sports. I expect to hear Ving Rhames offer to get the horses for his "mastuh" any minute now. Oh, Freddie... if you're lyin, you're dyin? That's tough. Especially with you lowering your voice like that. It's reminiscent of Rocky Balboa.

Then not only did they make up their own jargon, they butchered actual pool terminology. It's a good thing this movie never made it to theatres, or we'd have a bunch of clowns running around our pool halls rambling about dandelions and lemons.

Of course, the shots, the bridges, and the "sharking" these guys are doing are all horrible, but I expected no less. The rack twirl got me, though. You know what I'm talking about... That thing ball-bangers do. I also noticed when "Jericho" and "Cueball Carl" (*rolls eyes*) are playing, they rack the balls in numerical order. Nice. And love the glove, Carl.

Shooting Gallery was also an apt title. I think they shot more with guns than cues. I actually felt like I was watching a soft porn through some of those scenes.

Not all is lost, though. I walked away with a new playing strategy: When on the nine, hit it as hard as you can. And cuss. A lot.

This movie does what I never thought possible, which is suck more than 'Poolhall Junkies'.

Now its no citizen kane, but I was entertained. Good pool movie. Not too many great pool movies. Hustler, color of money, poolhall junkies, I am including this one too. Although not GREAT, its still a good watch. Guys in suits, tough talk, big stakes in the BIG easy, you know.. the good stuff. Only complaint was Freddy Prinze's accent OMG it was laughable. The other actors had it down, but watching Freddy trying to act tough was kinda funny, I had fun 6 stars!

Well, where can I begin? The film does start in a strange fashion, with quick editing to get the ball rolling (no pun intended) as quickly as possible. It will later transpire that there are quite a few twists and turns in the story, hence the quick beginning. But once we are past the opening sequences and we see the first game of 8-ball, the film slows down and shows it's strengths. There is certainly an element of the film "Rounders" in this film; hustle to get the better of your opposite man. However, what was portrayed in "Rounders" was (in my personal opinion) not even conceived in this film. Many many sequences came about where you can see a certain scene, suck your teeth and think: "Hell, they could have done it better in such a way...." And the sad part about that is that it actually happens in the middle of the film too! But the mid-to-end part of the film does wrap up quite nicely.

The visuals within the film are frantic and well shot. Quodos to Keoni Waxman for showing such a different forray of shots; the sleazy underworld, the wonderful city shots and the added bonus of Pool-Hall terms being printed and written across angled camera-shots - I liked it. Oh - and I can't miss out the scenes where they are actually playing 8-ball! They were well shot and edited - albeit, when someone is playing pool, we always want to see the whole table and see the shots in their entirety, but that would mean sitting through 8 hours of extra film! But as we all know, we aren't here to necessarily be wow'ed by visuals in a film. A film should be the whole ten yards (no - I am not talking about the film, I mean it as a phrase...).

Ving Rhames was waaay below par in this film, Freddy Prinz Jnr did an adequate job, the divine Roselyn Sanchez played quite well, albeit her history in the story does not need to be actually in there, and finally Callum Keith Rennie does a good performance, but his character was written in what seems to be a hurried way. The whole crew was (if you can imagine the analogy) put into a blender, served up with whipped cream and a cherry on top, when you are expecting something bitter. It didn't blend at all well, the acting between the people. But as I stated in my title: "good to waste a Sunday night...." - no more, no less.

What we don't need to have is people now lambasting a film in simple words of: "Yes, this is better than..." or "No-one can make a film of such a story better than...." This film, in it's own right, is a film that was straight-to-DVD/video and quite rightly so. No way would it have performed in the cinemas with this summer's blockbusters. It is going to be one of those films that people rent when they have run out of films to watch. But I hope that this review will raise a touch more interest than that. Yes, I haven't given it glaring and massive praise, but who needs it when the likes of "Crash", "Batman Begins", "War of The Worlds", "The 40-Year-Old Virgin" and "The Wedding Crashers" are all due for release at the same time? Give it a go, but don't expect too much. It's entertaining (especially the end actually - I wasn't expecting it!) and keeps you watching. What most of us need when there is nothing on TV!

Freddie prinz is Jericho, hot shot pool player. And playa he is. He joins Cue Ball's group (Rhames) to take the money the tourists were so ready to give them. He's supposed to hand over a percentage to Cue Ball every time. But he starts playing on his own. And doesn't hand it over. And an undercover bails him out. And wants something. If Jericho will set it up to give up Cue Ball, detective Mortenson ( Callum Rennie) will have his back. But the cop has his own weaknesses... who is scamming who in this match of matches? Written and directed by Keoni Waxman; had been making films for ten years by this time. This one is pretty good.

Waxman's straight-to-video film about a smart street pool player who gets involved with the wrong hustlers. It has a good enough screenplay, interesting direction and overall a great atmosphere. The actors do well enough, especially Rhames and Daniel Newman, though Prinze Jr.'s tone and speaking was totally wack, his acting wasn't completely horrible as he managed to get some of the emotional scenes down without appearing completely lost in the film. Still, Prinze jr. was the weak part about this film, Roselyn Sanchez was decent in the female role, though films like this have been done, and done well, like 86's "The Color of Money" directed by martin Scorsese, but i actually didn't mind Waxman's film, it was entertaining, fresh and fun to watch.--- IMDb Rating: 5.4, my rating: 9/10