How much did it take?


I don't know how much it takes to make such a movie,but save it. It suppose to be a thriller movie,but it turned out to be nothing but a waste of time. All the things are unprofessional ,the scipt(which is with lots of unlogical scenes),the actors ...... dude,save your money ,save your time,don't watch this....i suffered watching this....

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I'm curios. What did you not like about it? Be specific. What was not logical to you?

Was there *anything* you did like?

Jeff

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I've met the director a couple of times, and I liked his first two movies. In fact, he had let me have a copy of his first movie on DVD when I promised to send him a check for it (I wound up going to his office to give him the check). But Striking Range just didn't do it for me. I think the opening turned me off more than anything. The way Lou Diamond Phillips's and Tom Wright's characters were talking to each other made me think that the whole terrorist threat was just a training exercise. When I found out it was a real threat and they were acting so unprofessional and non-chalant about the whole thing, my suspension of disbelief just collapsed. It was probably supposed to be funny banter, but it just didn't work for me. I found it very difficult to get into the story after that.

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The opening really had nothing to do with the movie, much like the opening of a James Bond movie has nothing to do with the movie. It was just about showing the team on a mission. As for the banter and all while things were serious, have you ever seen Lethal Weapon? They were talking like that, because it's just a job to them; no more no less. It's no different than when you're making a pizza or washing dishes at a restaurant (you can talk and joke and do your work at the same time).

And if you check out on this movie because of the beginning, you're missing a really great storyline. Also, the movie was based on a video game, and that's why the chatter at the beginning of it was gaming related.

What would you have done differently?

Jeff

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In Lethal Weapon, I always got the impression that the banter between Mel Gibson and Danny Glover were how they dealt with the stress of the situation. The banter in Striking Range just seemed too non-chalant -- that the characters didn't take the killing of another human being seriously.

Daniel's other movies, "The Keyman" and "The Gunman" had some kind of spiritual element to them that I just didn't sense with "Striking Range." More than anything else, maybe that's why I was disappointed with the movie.

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Well, I had just finished a massive study on I and II Samuel. The violence in SR is minuscule compared to that. Talk about a lot of killing of human beings. I actually felt I had an even stronger spiritual message in this one... but a person probably has to think harder to get it.

I opened with the Charles Finney quote "The natural state of man is selfishness." Finney was a nineteenth century lawyer and theologian along the lines of CS Lewis. Finney's quote comes from a book he wrote about True and False Conversion. His point was that a "false conversion" was where a person never left that natural state of selfishness.

Throughout the movie, everyone, including Vash, has their own selfish agenda. Vash slowly learns through the course of the movie that you cannot truly be free until you die to your selfishness.

Anyway, don't know if this helps or hurts. I do appreciate your comments and I'm glad you enjoyed the first two movies. :) You will probably like my next movie more (it's still in the script stage).

Sincerely,
Daniel Millican
filmmaker

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The problem with this movie, though, is that it is a neverending cliche. All of the characters, and their actions, are expected. Even their lines are cliche.

The only non-cliche moments were the worst of the entire movie. The whole FPS sports "subplot" was meaningless other than to establish the home life of a character that nobody cares about because he ruins the plan. Either that, or we don't care about this jerk who doesn't pay the people that work for him. In a movie of this nature, it is difficult to ask the audience to particularly care for one character, let alone two. And the problem here is that we don't care about any of them.

On a technical level, the whole ninja sequence was way too dark, and so were any scenes of hand to hand combat. There is no point in having hand to hand combat in a movie if you cannot see it. There were numerous times where the camera was shaken much too harshly to be intentional, even if it's on the shoulder. This is most notable in the "conference room" where Phillips and that woman are talking to the client. Also there were a great number of scenes where the focus was not on anything in the frame while actors are talking and it would wobble in and out. That's just bad film making. I assume someone was paid to do this movie, though.

I haven't seen those other movies, but this one is just really quite bad and a poor use of fantastic resources and opportunity.

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