Reviews & Ratings for
The Heavy More at IMDbPro »

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17 out of 24 people found the following review useful:
Setting the Record Straight, 26 December 2010

Author: bearrosson from United States

This is a pretty decent flick.(from a couch potato point of view) I like lots of action, shooting, people blowing things up and people shooting other people, etc. I don't really know why some others gave it such a poor rating. I just hate for someone to miss out on a good movie based on the review alone, which is what I believe has happened here. I do not by any means claim to be an expert in producing, writing or just basic making of a movie, but I do know a good flick when I see one. Vinnie Jones does a great job in bringing action to the screen, as always. Maybe I'm wrong, but I think one would be sorry if you missed this one just from reading the review alone. If you're an action junkie, like me, spend a few bucks and rent this one. You'll be glad you did.

12 out of 15 people found the following review useful:
Very Slow Moving Crime Drama, 11 April 2010

Author: chicagopoetry from United States

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

Fair warning, The Heavy is not action packed or very suspenseful. It is a pretty slow moving drama about a reluctant assassin hired to kill his own brother. There is a failed attempt to keep things interesting by scrambling the time line with a sort of Pulp Fiction feel but it doesn't work. Nothing really makes any sense, why the woman who is being held captive isn't tied up or why the crack shot needs fifty bullets to put one in the bad guy's head and so on and so forth. The script is just contrived to keep things moving along for one of the longest hour and a halves that you are likely to experience. The Heavy is a pretty well made bad movie but a bad movie nonetheless.

9 out of 12 people found the following review useful:
Disappointing, 29 December 2010

Author: Dutch73 from United States

With a new TV for Christmas and having viewed most of the new titles out there, I was looking for something new and visually pleasing with some potential action to spice it up. After reading terrible reviews almost across the board for this movie, I came across one review that said it was a good action movie to just sit back and enjoy and that the story wasn't terrible...the reviewer must have been thinking of another movie. I was looking forward to at least some quality acting based on the cast, but it was one corny line and terrible camera angle after the other. The action was extremely limited which made the long stretches of poor story and character development even more unbearable. When the action did show up, it was quick and made even worse by the cheesy matrix style(camera following slow motion bullets with trails) it was edited with. Avoid this one if you value 2 hours of your life that you could be doing something much more productive with. I felt cheated in the end.

16 out of 26 people found the following review useful:
Dull and painful, 24 October 2010

Author: freeride_1973 from United Kingdom

The acting is horrendous the lead actor isn't even 1 dimensional. The politician brother's acting is worse than the new guy in your average soap.

The plot is relatively simple, it would take a good director to spin this into a decent film. Lacks drama, suspense, any humour, plot twists, it's not even violent. Quite possibly the most boring film I've ever tried to watch. It's that bad I felt the need to comment on it!

Vinnie Jones is undertaking an exercise in hamming it up.

Obviously Christopher Lee produces a good performance by default.

Christopher Lee fell out with management on the Lord of the Rings due to artistic differences and then undertakes a project like this!!!

PS the politicians wife just piped up, just when I thought I had already seen the worst performance in this film.

23 out of 42 people found the following review useful:
Amazed it was financed... didn't anybody read the script?, 19 April 2010

Author: BazBaz001 from United Kingdom

This is one of those movies you really hope will be good and with a reasonable cast, should have been, i was looking forward to watching it but with a newborn son, struggled to find the time.. when i did find the time it was wasted on one of the worst films i have seen for a while (and i have seen Dear John). I thought that maybe this was one of those movies that might have had a great original script that was then bastardized by rewrites and a different directorial view, but then noticed it was written and directed by the same guy Marcus Warren, so assume he must have been happy with it, Gary Stretch who was promising in Dead Man Shoes, never seemed to go anywhere with his character who seemed to have the morals of a saint one minute and Bill Sykes the next. I have enjoyed some of the Vinnie Jones movies i have seen but always felt that he was being carried by the other cast members.. in this, he does the carrying and did what he could with the terrible dialogue, i should have known as soon as i saw idiot boy Lee Ryan in this sorry excuse of a film, maybe he is a friend of Marcus Warren who must have great friends to get this dross made in the first place!

4 out of 6 people found the following review useful:
Some factual problems with parts of the plot..., 29 December 2010

Author: Pablo1982 from United Kingdom

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

Whilst it is good to see some new stuff coming out of the British film industry I didn't quite enjoy this film as much as I had hoped

For one thing, Obstructive Cardiomyopathy is indeed a nasty disease and it is indeed familial. However, I spent most of the move trying to figure out exactly what Boots had to give for his brother as a heart transplant would leave him... well, dead. So this gap in the plot was too irreconcilable for me to be honest

The characters aren't too complex and seemed to float in and out of scene a little too much. more could have been revealed about Boot's past

The clocks were a nice touch

On the whole the film was watchable and made for a nice movie whilst the wife was out on a girls night out.

3 out of 5 people found the following review useful:
Worth watching for Vinnie's beard, 21 June 2011
Author: JoeytheBrit from www.moviemoviesite.com

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

It's difficult to know where to start describing all the things that are wrong about this movie while also explaining why it was reasonably entertaining. I can understand why some (many) other reviewers felt The Heavy was an awful experience – I just can't quite share their absolute disdain for it.

Gary Stretch plays Boots Mason, an embittered ex-con with anger management issues who is employed to assassinate his own brother Christian, a politician with aspirations to one day become Prime Minister (so we know he's a bad guy right from the off). However, Christian has learned of the plot to off him and hires the thuggish Detective Dunne (Vinnie Jones, sporting a rather splendid goatee of which he seems justifiably proud) to track down the assassin.

While this is no classic by anyone's reckoning, it somehow just about manages to overcome a high quota of drawbacks in order to deliver a reasonably absorbing thriller that runs out of steam about fifteen minutes from the credits thanks largely to an overlong running time. Ex-boxer Stretch certainly has screen presence, and the camera likes his brooding, slightly battered looks, but his acting talent is limited – something of which he seems to be aware given the careful manner in which he delivers his lines. His character broods moodily for much of the film, but then he's got a lot to brood over. Vinnie Jones as his nemesis, the brutish Detective Dunn, gives a much more assured performance and effortlessly enlivens things when he lumbers onto the screen. Other familiar faces include Stephen Rea as a slimy crime baron, Christopher Lee as Boot's dad, Jean Marsh as his mum, and Lee Ryan as slimy Steve's weaselly sidekick.

Apart from its' overlong running time, the film's major stumbling block is the truly bad acting, a flaw not helped by a dull script that lacks any purpose other than to move the action on to the next scene. Given the quality of the cast, the poor standard of the acting is something of a surprise. By far the worst is Adrian Paul as Boots' terminally ill brother, whose use of inflection is so misjudged that he seems to have no idea of what he is actually saying. I've honestly seen more convincing delivery from foreign actors speaking English they have learned phonetically. Jean Marsh is also entirely unconvincing as Boots' mum.

...has heart, 6 February 2013

Author: pilgrimlin from United States

Sometimes I like to check out the rating of a movie that I like...and I like this movie. I like the main character/actor in this...thug with heart. As for vinnie jones, of course hes a good actor...but I never even remember that he's in this when I think of watching this movie...and I've watched it a few times, and Im watching it now over a heineken. Good ending, the music fits. I like it. To sum it up, I recently watched 'the package' with dolf and steve austin...now that was a souless boring movie that I could barely pay attention to, and I like those actors. This movie has heart...and Im guessing cost a lot less to make.

6 out of 12 people found the following review useful:
So bad but the last 30 minutes almost redeems it!, 26 October 2010

Author: andy-gilligan from United Kingdom

I had high hopes for this movie. The plot was a man out of jail working as a debt collector for a local business who was asked to do one last job, in order to get out of it all!! then you have his brother Christian (played by an awful Adrian Paul from the Highlander TV series) who was responsible for putting him in prison who wants to make amends for what happened. When i say "make amends" it certainly doesn't pan out in that way. More on this character later.

Gary Stretch who plays the lead character Mitchell Mason, has a good on-screen presence, but he is not a leading man. He is surrounded by some heavyweights and some seriously bad "lightweights" that actually make him look like Robert De Niro at times (no offence Bob). He tries his best but even Vinnie Jones as the corrupt cop makes him look like a cardboard cut-out as he hams up the "bad cop" role like a spit-roasted pig.

Christopher Lee and Jean Marsh are on show (yet i can't see what possessed them to want to be part of this?) play the parents and some of their scenes are so painful to watch as they are put in scenes with such awful acting that you feel embarrassed for them!

Stephen Rea does his best as an upper class bad guy but you still cringe watching the drivel script he has to deal with. Then you have Sadie Frost as a local Bar Owner (i'm not sure what this part of the film's purpose was, as it was pointless).

Then you have the worst acting I have seen in a long time. Hang on, 2nd worst!

Adrian Paul who plays Mitchell's brother Christian, simply CANNOT act, and that is an understatement. I have seen dead people show more emotion and talent than this guy. I think the director actually did him a favour in hiring the actress to play his wife as she is even worse, and that must have been tough. The acting by these 2 characters would've been perfect in an Olaf Ittenbach horror movie. Yes, its that bad!!

The storyline is all over the place as it tries to be cool and modern by going back and forth in the timelines. I think the film would have worked better if they had just done it from first date to last. I think new directors must think this works in gangster style movies but in this one it fails.

On a plus point, the scenes with Shannyn Sossamon (Claire) are the high points of the film. If only they had put more into this than they did, it could've actually been a good film. There is definitely a chemistry there between the 2 characters and they should have focused on this a lot more. I would say Shannyn's performance is one of the better ones overall.

The last 20-30 minutes of this film are actually not bad, if you can endure the first 70 minutes. But don't expect anything special with this film. You won't get it!! Best thing to do? go and dig out Going Off Big Time. Similar film but better acting, script, plot, etc.

1 out of 3 people found the following review useful:
Waste of an hour and 40 Min's., 28 September 2011
Author: mct335 from United Kingdom

Appalling acting as Freeride said, Stretch is an unappealing anti hero, the guy playing his brother is the worst actor i have seen in many a year, you don't really care what happens to any of them, the story line flies past at 1 mile an hour, Geoff Bell must have been stuck for work same as Christopher Lee, and Vinnie will take on any role as long as it keeps his mush on the silver screen.Avoid at all costs and save your money towards a tooth extraction, it will be more fun.

This should have gone straight in the bin and not to DVD, it is time i will never get back, and i kept thinking i have to turn this rubbish off, but i just had to see it through, it was that bad. Never tell a boxer( and the guy playing his insipid brother) he can act i think is the moral here.

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