Easy Targets (2021) User Reviews

one step above a High School production

[OzMovieWatcher · 1/10 · 14 August 2022]

Don't waste your time watching this rubbish. Horrible movie likened to a high school project.

The 'jungle' is clearly not anywhere in Asia. The vegetation looks very much like that seen in state parks of southern California.

Everything that could be wrong with the props is wrong.... wrong uniforms for the US soldiers, wrong style of clothes for the Vietnamese enemy who were neither dressed as an NVA or a Viet Cong. The types of weapons were all wrong. Type of helicopter was wrong as was it's colors (blue and white ???).... everything wrong. Why oh why are there automatic weapons being fired and not a single spent round ejected ?

How does the smoke from a damaged helicopter engine (located under the spinning rotors) just drift off to one side like a smokey campfire ??

Almost none of the alleged Vietnamese actually looked Vietnamese at all. The casting of the "Vietnamese" was a poor effort... They were all carrying way too many pounds of flesh. The north Vietnamese were on a near starvation diet during the war... They were malnourished and skinny.

The acting was very poor. Sounded more like they were reading off cue card.

The action scenes were poorly choreographed... For crying out loud... what incompetent soldiers would ever take on close armed battle without cover while sitting or standing while firing and doing it in the open??? And at perhaps a mere 15 metres apart, how could any shot fired from a rifle actually miss ?? Oh and BTW... it is physically impossible to use your arm to crawl away after a 7.62mm bullet hits the shoulder joint... and further..... No exit wound ???? The projectile at close range would go straight through the shoulder joint leaving a major cavity on the way out.!!

The story was rubbish and there was no suspense of "edge of your seat" moments at anytime. Story was very slow.

This is a very poor amateur production and should only be viewed as learning material of how NOT to make a war movie.

"Ridiculous" is an understatement

[drystyx · 1/10 · 27 December 2021]

I thought this would be a psychological war film, but it just doesn't get any more contrived, Hollywood, and ridiculous as this.

The director is also the writer, so the blame gets pinned on one person.

Not a single one of the four main characters has one iota of credible motivation. Not one of them. I don't want to put a spoiler in, but the writer just decided to make the outcome whatever he wanted, however Hollywood and predictable it could be.

We see this playing out as a horror story if the survivors return to civilian life, so we know at least one of the two focal point soldiers of this movie will return to civilian life.

Okay, so the two soldiers are insane. We get enough preaching about that. The two characters who deal with insanity later have no credible motivation for anything they do, either.

But the story is the traditional and totally "safe" Hollywood formula of depress and alienate the audience. There are plenty of Beavis and Butthead types who will applaud that, especially from the noted critics circles.

But it is ridiculous. Don't say I didn't warn you.

Third Time's the Charm

[Pycal · 8/10 · 12 November 2021]

With two misses in the war genre with Korean War movie I DIE ALONE and the WWII set NEAR ENEMIES, director Michael Fredianelli finally hits the mark with his Vietnam War movie EASY TARGETS. The film opens in medias res during a bloody action scene full of pyrotechnics, slow motion, bloody squibs, and rapid cross cut editing highly reminiscent of Sam Peckinpah's 1977 war film CROSS OF IRON. The movie gets it right starting off with a bang and gives you your monies worth almost immediately. What follows fares about as good as the viewer is brought along on a mission with a sniper and a spotter behind enemy lines during the late stages of US involvement in the Vietnam War. A game of cat and mouse ensues with a Viet Cong Sniper known as the VC Viper and the tension does not let up.

For an independent film with a low budget, you have to be impressed with how much bang Fredianelli gets for his buck filming a Vietnam movie in California. The locations more often than not pass well enough to sell the illusion and there's even a shot of farmland that's damn near mistakable for a Vietnamese rice paddy. The Viet Cong's costuming and weaponry could have been a bit better given the film's version of the communist fighting arm doesn't resemble the historical Viet Cong too well. Their costuming rings far too sophisticated for the ragtag guerrilla fighters with modern cargo pants and boots when sandals and more traditional Vietnamese garb would have been appropriate. And while the armament selections aren't bad (The Viet Cong got their hands on almost every weapon type of then recent vintage they could get), it's a little odd to see only one or two of the infamous AK-47 assault rifles being fielded by the guerrilla force in the war's latter stage in 1973. At best, a good chunk of the Viet Cong soldiers in this movie look like the mercenaries you'd see in a 1980s Southeast Asia set Hong Kong action figure and that's not necessarily a bad thing if you're into that sort of thing and have nostalgia for those movies.

Acting wise, Carlos Flores Jr. Does a great job headlining the film as the calm, collected, and highly dedicated sniper. He's a joy to watch as he shows his newfound spotter the ropes and employs many tricks of the trade to dispatch Viet Cong sentries and track the Notorious VC Viper. Liam Sharpe is a little less effective playing the shell shocked spotter and comes off as maybe slightly over the top as the cliché "headcase." His double dose of PTSD and religious zealotry surely had to make him one of the more challenging roles to get right from an acting standpoint. On the opposing front, the Viet Cong has less to do, but we manage to get some great moments with stoic Michael Catura who comes off as a more than adequate threat to our lead American sniper. In particular, there's a great training montage sequence featuring the character accompanied by a Vietnamese acid rock soundtrack that is fun to watch and really sets the pace for the rivalry between opposing snipers and their ultimate face-off. Boynton Paek and Thomas Nguyen are memorable showing up as minor Viet Cong sentries and add authenticity bringing actual Vietnamese dialog to the movie's proceedings. While it can be assumed that Nguyen is a native speaker, Korean-American actor American Paek (who previously delivered lines in Japanese for director Fredianelli's NEAR ENEMIES) proves a knack for dialect and linguistics performing what sounds like an authentic Vietnamese accent (this reviewer has visited Vietnam and the language has a very specific and difficult to imitate cadence that Paek nails here).

All in all, EASY TARGETS is a solid low budget war movie that keeps you thrilled from start to finish. While it explores some similar themes to Fredianelli's earlier film NEAR ENEMIES, it does so far more effectively and remains the director's best stab at the war genre so far.

There's an Enemy Beast of War Sniper at the Gates with Combat Shock

[Aylmer · 7/10 · 10 July 2021]

A group of G. I.'s get cut off in the middle of Vietnam and gradually start to lose their sanity while embroiled in a series of sniper battles.

While the acting gets a little wobbly at times, there's a few bang-up action sequences on display, particularly a drawn out battle at the very start with a lot of impressive pyrotechnics for a relatively low budget movie. How do I know this was low budget? Well, mainly the costume design for the Vietcong seems a bit off. There isn't one character wearing sandals and black pajamas or the iconic cone-shaped hats that real V. C. would wear. Instead they're almost all dressed in very American earthtones that would work much better as camo in Southern California than South Vietnam. There isn't any depiction of Vietnamese civilian life, as even a stroll through a populated village would have helped increase the scope tremendously. Then when we get to Los Angeles post war to see one of the men deal with PTSD, about 75% of it is relegated to a dingy apartment as he struggles to reconcile his inner demons with civilian life.

Complaints aside, I'm impressed that they got as much authentic military equipment and bloody squibs together as they did. The film also comes complete with a lot of touching moments of humanity seen lacking in a lot of newer war movies. There's weight to the deaths, sadness to the suicidal spiral, and a few very beautifully composed shots sprinkled in. Some of the best performances come from a few of the actors playing V. C. who even sport a few conversations in authentic Vietnamese.