Assault on VA-33

You can't excuse experienced producer and director Christopher Ray for such failure in directing his cast, or for his long dragged out shots and terrible camera work. I've seen first time filmmakers do a much better job in all areas of directing. I was actually expecting a young first attempt director, but sadly, no. How could he have approved such a bad final cut to go to distribution.

You can however, cut some slack for seasoned actor turned newb writer Scott Thomas Reynolds for the major plot holes in a story that isn't exactly original, but was still somewhat entertaining. I just wish some of the real obvious plot and technical issues would've been easily fixed; the nonsense band conversation in the van, then using a silencer, but never throughout the initial gunfire inside that hospital, that apparently everyone inside never heard. But the tween dialogue and cheesy humor in between major scenes where the main pitfalls in his writing. Then there was the normally comfortable 90 min runtime that felt longer and dragged out from the slow pacing and long dragged out and/or unnecessary scenes. I'm thinking this screenplay's story would've been better as a short, or at best a 1 hour TV movie, from lacking that much substance. But then again, for a newb writer with this film being only his second credit, he did good, because even screenwriters have to start somewhere, right?

Had Reynolds' script been directed properly, it wouldn't have felt as bad as it was. So the blame falls on the experienced director as to why this film was a flop. Even Sean Patrick Flanery (who just nailed it in Born a Champion) couldn't save this film. And why cast the awesome Michael Jai White and not have him do any arse kicking? The rest of the casting and performances were actually good and for the most part convincing, with the exception of Weston Cage Coppola as Adrian Rabikov. His performance seemed very amateurish - not that he's a seasoned actor, but I'm sure mostly from the lack of cast direction from Ray didn't that didn't help his overall performance. Even his very bad and laughable Russian or whatever that was accent made his character look simpy.

The cinematography was decent, and the score was surprisingly adequate for a B grade film, where it's usually loud, overbearing and unfitting. The editing (was there even any?) needed more cuts to the runtime by chopping down most of the scenes, and many scene transitions were sloppy. I'm guessing this was a low budget film due to the main set being a hospital under renovations, although it was used well.

Nevertheless, it's an ok film to watch if there's nothing better on, which nowadays there's only slim pickings. It's a generous 5/10 from me.