Do yourself a favor and buy this movie right now. Not only is it a ton of fun to watch, but it's also the future of movie making. For less than $275k, director Gaelan Connell has made a epic action movie that gives most any Hollywood blockbuster a run for it's money. Sure, the script has a few cheesy lines, (it is an action movie after all), and none of the actors (all relatively unknowns) deliver a performance quite as memorable as, say, Heath Ledger did as the Joker. But this movie was shot for a fraction of the budget of any Hollywood blockbuster and is honestly almost as good. The Dark Knight cost $180 million to make. Blood, Sand, and Gold literally cost 0.1% percent of that to make. Not one percent. POINT one percent! And here is the crazy thing: You really wouldn't know it was made for so little by watching it. The action sequences are top notch, the locations are exotic, and the pacing is superb. There are car chases, foot pursuits, exploding trucks, helicopters, grenade launchers, machine guns, luxury cars, and a seriously big tiger! Part of what makes the movie so exciting is that Mr. Connell and his crew didn't rely on special effects during any of the movie's many action scenes. When one of the bad guys gets chased straight off the roof of a building, the stunt guy really does go crashing into the hood of the car parked below. Metal bends, the windshield shatters, and you completely forget that you are just watching a movie. When the fuel tank on an SUV ruptures after a car chase in the desert, you watch as it actually blows up! There is no CGI or digital touch up, just one massive fireball as the SUV explodes into gnarl of twisted char. It is gritty and real and absolutely exhilarating to watch.
If I were a Hollywood producer I would be terrified of Gaelan Connell. With Blood, Sand, and Gold, he just proved that with enough raw talent and ambition you can make a full-length, blockbuster quality action movie for about the same amount of money that Christopher Nolan spent on just 30 seconds of the Dark Knight. This is the future of film making!
