1/10 As someone who is honest about my own biases (I definitely lean to the right) and follows politics as closely as I do film, you could say that a movie like this was tailor made for a critic such as myself. While I previously would have thought that a movie distributed by Breitbart News would have zero nuance (I’d be correct in this case), The Daily Wire getting into film content has shown surprising restraint by telling straight forward stories that keep politics largely out of the spotlight. Even when they do, with “What is a Woman?” for example, they wisely interview all sides and avoid only telling one side of the story. So The Daily Wire has proven that right leaning film companies can still put out solid content and not just be the antithesis of Vice or some of the far left studios who have worked on film making (Netflix, Disney and Universal continue to shift further left). I’ll begin with why this movie earned its lone point before I get into why this movie is horrendous and should offend people on both sides of the political aisle. Half a point I give to screenwriter Brian Godawa for at least being extremely well researched. All of the main facts about the rampant corruption with both Joe and Hunter Biden, along with elements such as big tech/social media platforms censoring legitimate news to directly influence the 2020 election while simultaneously covering up Biden family crimes and projecting onto Trump are all spot on and factual. As someone who has closely followed these stories for years at this point, the movie certainly knows its facts and bravely calls them out. The other half point goes to some mild subversion of expectations. While the movie does show Hunter Biden’s degenerate nature, I was surprised to see the movie try to paint him in a sympathetic and empathetic light. While you should make the character your movie follows relatable in some way, the way in which he is portrayed here almost goes against the movie’s main message. So even though I am rewarding the movie with half a point for subverting my expectations, I am not 100% sure that is a good thing. As to why this is a horrible movie, there are many points but I will just point out the major ones for the sake of time. Director Robert Davi is a well known, talented actor but his work behind the camera makes me wish he would remain in front of the camera. While I can’t say I have seen his first two movies, watching this makes me never want to explore them. This feels like it is someone’s first time directing and that that person is fresh out of high school. The production looks so incredibly cheap and if I had to describe the movie in one word it would be cartoonish. The best evidence of this takes place during a scene early on in the movie after Hunter has thrown a wild party and almost everyone has passed out. He walks over to someone with a dog on their lap and Hunter and the dog have a conversation via thought bubbles like you would see in a comic book or a cartoon. It is extremely cringe worthy and why the idea of having Hunter talk to a dog in the first place was floated is beyond me. If you wanted to convey that he is high so he thinks he is talking to the dog, there are 100 better ways of doing so. The cartoonish sound effects certainly don’t help matters. The beginning of the movie even has on screen text which is then spoken aloud by Gina Carano’s Agent Hound character. If someone is going to say something, you don’t need the text onscreen or if the text is onscreen then you don’t need someone to verbally say it. Little things like that show a lapse in logic and unfortunately there are a ton of moments like that. Characters break the fourth wall to talk to the audience and it feels so cheesy and completely misfires. The dialogue is so incredibly bad and forced. Godawa knows a ton of dumb things that the Bidens have said but he throws them all together with no nuance and sticks lines in places that feel so unnatural. He would rather shove in all these lines instead of having them come up naturally and it comes across as pretty pathetic. No one on the left side of the aisle will watch this because most people on the left want to bury their head in the sand and ignore any and all Biden family corruption. Anytime I have brought it up to real life Biden voters they quickly change the subject to Trump and I have to remind them that we aren’t talking about Trump, but the current “President”. People on the right like me who can appreciate the message of the movie still want movies that are well made, well written and that have a production budget that is more than what Hunter blows in a single night on drugs and prostitutes. People on the right praising this are ignoring how poorly made this is and how overacted the performances are. Breitbart should leave the conservative film making to The Daily Wire if this is the level of “quality” they are going to put out. A documentary about the Biden family corruption would have been much better suited at getting the point across instead of turning all potential viewers off with how poorly and laughably made this monstrosity is.
#MakeMoviesGreatAgain / #SexLiesAndLaptops / #TheHunterForBlueOctober / #CrackAtTheCrackOfDawn / #BuildCrackBetter / #CantSpellJokeWithoutTheJoe
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