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Reviews
Soldier Boyz (1995)
Oh my god! :S
I just can't find the words... Reading the title can make you understand already what type of a movie it is. And yes, it's a comedy. Really! Nobody can make a serious flick like that, the action sequences we're more realistic in "Hot shots"(I'm not being ironical) I'll just concentrate on the military point of view.
A) the main character is supposed to be a bad-ass retired major. What kind of a leader would take into his team a psychopathic woman, a black serial killer/rapist,a skinhead, a Mexican gang member, a black gang member and some guy with who's martial arts he was just impressed with. What the hell was the criteria that he chose them for? He was not able to predict that there might be a few problems in the team? Rapist vs girl; skinhead vs blacks&Mexican; black vs Mexican etc.
B) why are the Americans using an AK-47 and the Vietnamese M-16's?(using an AK-47 would be logical if you would want to use the enemy's ammo, but its kind of a fail if they're using a different caliber weapon) + where did the Vietnamese get Humvees and Huey's and M60's and M72's? Vietnam war leftovers? :S
C) if the major wants 6 people in his team, I think he could be able to find 6 ex-soldiers in a prison, no? A 40 year old veteran would for sure be a better choice than a guy who doesn't even know how to use a gun. D) the major trained them to be soldiers in 1 day. impressive!
E) well actually you can see the results in the entire movie, they don't have the best shooting techniques in the world :D the Mexican runs around the forest with 2 pistols, shooting berserk; the black guy shoots half the time an M4 from 1 hand and kills a lot of Vietnamese... again - just impressive. Oh yeah, if a helicopter arrives, obviously the best technique is that everybody takes their gun in one hand and shoots in the air.
F) blood. incredible how much blood a skinhead can lose before falling down. any normal person would be in shock/unconscious from this huge blood loss, but not this guy, he can run at the same time and sometimes shoot back(PS! i loved his swastika tattoo :D some freehand drawing with black permanent marker)
I'm too tired to think about this movie any more. just stay away from it, i think the writer was drunk/stoned and wrote it in 1 night. i enjoyed "mega shark vs giant octopus" 10x more.
Rigas sargi (2007)
a big boo against the script
bff, i don't even know where to start... all in all, i didn't like it at all. the most annoying thing for me was that the Russians/Germans were "demonized" in the movie. Especially the Russian colonel. and every time the German general spoke, he tried to imitate Hitler. he might have been a good speaker in real life, but this also went to far - it's just ugly stereotyping. i also didn't like the main characters, they didn't connect very well with the audience. they seemed as if they were 5 years old sometimes... they took their decisions too simply, their dialogs most of the time pointless. also the age of actors should have been younger, most of them looked like they were 40-50. i'm sure most of the guys, who picked up the rifles, were younger(pupils, students etc) and what's up with the love stories? i know it might seem as a good idea to bring love stuff in the into war movies, but then show me some convincing love at least. it's a movie, it needs words! it's not a book where you can read your protagonist's thoughts. and why did Riga seem like a village all the time? also the story in the first 1,5h was quite pointless. why was it there anyway? if it wanted to bring the audience closer to the average Latvian person, then i they didn't do a very good job at it. also i didn't like the "unauthentic" history. the boats, martins-ulmanis vodka drinking together, the artillery etc... well at least there were some points in the movie that i didn't feel like i wanted to run out of the cinema. for instance i liked how the final battle was made and one could see that there was a lot of effort in it, also in the bombing of Riga. but attacking the German cannons with 4 guys(1 of them was an alcoholic, the other one a fireman and one guy was serving in the army earlier in the artillery)? it's just too absurd... what if the Germans accidentally had about 30 guys there at the time? then it would have been kaka for them... and also what was up with the Indiana Jones style fist-fight in the end? can you get any more cliché than that!?(not the mention the hundreds of other of clichés in the movie, like accidentally hitting a German armored vehicle with the first shot without any aiming) but again - in enjoyed the final attack in the movie. it was something that i was waiting a lot in after these horrible non-stop dialogs and sometimes bad montage. the costumes were great, everything seemed authentic for some time :) also the scenes about Riga were well done. i've visited cine ville once and i also really liked how they actually used this small territory so well. but this type of movie might have worked 70-80 years ago in Latvia, but now it just seems pathetic, it seems like a mindless propaganda from the Nazis. even with this kind of money you can always make better movies... we have a lot to learn in the baltics about movies(especially about war movies)