Far Cry Reviews

Initial Thought: I have been avoiding this one for quite some time mostly because of Uwe Boll. I have been playing Far Cry 4 for the past week so I was thinking why not. I want to see how bad this can actually be. No I'm not a fan of Uwe Boll although he has had a very, very few movies I actually was entertained by. I do think he got a decent cast together for this one. I am simply curious.

Characters/Acting: I really enjoy Til Schweiger, Emmanuelle Vaugier, and to a certain extent Udo Kier. So to see them all here has me somewhat impressed. Why is everyone so stupid here? How can someone be in their 30s and not know what a grenade is? Some journalist Valerie is. You know one thing they got right here from the first Far Cry is that the voice acting in the game was pretty bad. At least they managed to do that right. The lame male sidekick that shows up near the halfway point was absolutely ridiculous. He overacts everything especially whenever he says his back hurts. Most of the characters here are so annoying. I did think Jack Carver was fine although I wish he was written out better, but can't expect much from Uwe Boll's writers. Max probably had the coolest moment near the end though.

Story: Well it's based off of a video game. The video game stories are usually about survival and taking down an evil leader. I'm sure this is basically the plot for the movie as well. I really don't understand the whole horror like scenario that happens in the beginning. I do like that some of elements of the game can be noticed here and there. Wow I have no seen one of the cheesiest "is that your gun" scenes where it literally is his gun. So basically they have a one night stand after barely knowing each other except for what they do. It was unnecessary and feels so unnatural. There are a lot of lame running jokes here. We have the "You owe me..." that different characters toss at each other, the constant wonder of how Jack was in bed, and Valerie and Jack mocking each others same exact line word for word in different scenes. Most of the action here comes about the middle of the movie and 2/3rds of the action is in the dark except for near the end. It's pretty decent action to be honest. There are a few plot holes regarding the super soldiers. If they can be shot anywhere without damage how does one die from the shot to the side of the head and also how can a needle even penetrate such durable skin. Also why the hell do some of the soldiers hip fire at the super soldiers when they know where to shoot them. I felt no closure at the end. The villain wasn't shown killed so how can I be sure what the hell even happened to him.

Directing/Writing: Uwe Boll must get a kick out of ruining games with terrible movies based of them. I mean why else does he continue to try. I'm watching this for free so I'm not contributing haha. He has a continuous streak of just awful work and he has very few fans. I'm sure people get excited when they hear they are getting a movie based off their favorite game. Then all of a sudden they realize it's Uwe Boll and lose all joy. Now I have actually enjoyed a few recent works of his including the Rampage movies and Assault on Wall Street because they are just mindless violent movies. I also thought Postal, Attack on Darfur, and Bloodrayne were just alright. They were watchable only once though. Dear lord this movie took three people to write it! Surprise, Surprise Michael Roesch and Peter Scheerer collaborated with Uwe Boll for Alone in the Dark and then directed it's sequel as well as a sequel for House of the Dead which the first was directed by Boll. Even Masaji Takei worked with Uwe Boll on Bloodrayne 2 as his only other film. This isn't very comforting to start off with. There are so many things bad about this that have to do with writing. The running jokes are lame and the characters are poorly written and directed to do such stupid actions.

Final Thought: This was not enjoyable at all. If you are a Far Cry fan this is not the production you want to see. If you see Uwe Boll at the helm it's better to expect the worst. The action scenes had a few decent moments. I think it wasn't the worst it could have been, but they really could have tried to actually make it work. It was godawful, but there are worse ways it could have gone. I wish there could be someone who takes Uwe Boll's place at making video games. Someone who is actually going to cater to the audience of those games while introducing to a wider selection as well.

This may be Uwe Boll's best movie ever. No,I'm not a fan. How could I be. Uwe Boll is a director who shows no respect for his audience and doesn't deserve respect when it comes to making movies. He even admitted himself that he does it solely for the money. He is not skilled at all and has got the creativity of an amoeba. But is that a reason for not liking or watching his movies. Well,yes and no. It all comes down to expectation. If you have none than "Far Cry" will surprise you. Til Schweiger is well aware of Boll's reputation and doesn't take it seriously which shows and is one of the strong points of the movie. The second strong element are the action scenes which are actually pretty decent and fun to watch. Does this movie has anything to do with the game? Of course not(OK,maybe 1 or 2 elements are taken from the game). Does it have a good story? Guess again. What about the acting? At least it wasn't completely annoying and Til's Jack Carver was very likable. "Far Cry" is movie that can be fun if you are able to put your brain off.

"You are one resistant son of a bitch."

Uwe Boll (which is German for "Appalling Filmmaker") has made a living over recent years (and has angered a great deal of people) by transforming beloved video game properties into epically awful movies. As a result, the cultural landscape has become tragically cluttered with unwatchable motion pictures such as House of the Dead, BloodRayne, Alone in the Dark and In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale. Boll's latest video game adaptation-turned-sign-of-the-Apocalypse is 2008's Far Cry, which was adapted from the PC shooter of the same name. The lush tropical island setting of the game has been replaced with the Pacific Northwest, and silently sneaking through the forest picking off soldiers has been replaced with abysmal dialogue and brainless, unexciting action scenes. Never thought it would happen, but Boll has reached yet another new low. After showing evidence that he may be improving in 1968 Tunnel Rats, Boll's work is firmly back in the doldrums.

The protagonist of the video game is retained here: an ex-special forces operative named Jack Carver (Schweiger). Now a transport for hire, Jack accompanies investigative journalist Valerie Constantine (Vaugier) to a mysterious island in the Pacific Northwest where she suspects something heinous is occurring. As it turns out, of course, her suspicions are proved to be correct. Occupying this island is mad scientist Dr. Krieger (Kier), who is genetically engineering a race of super-soldiers. Jack and Valerie's presence on the island is not exactly welcome, and henchmen are dispatched to take care of them. With Valerie captured and Jack's boat destroyed, Jack enters reluctant hero mode.

It's a very simple set-up that isn't too far removed from the plot of the game. Problem is, it takes half an hour of this 90-minute film for the action to start. Sure, Boll tried to transcend the genre by taking his time to develop the characters and the plot, but the first 30 minutes are hopelessly marred by poor acting, poor dialogue and slipshod filmmaking. By the time the action set-pieces begin, things are so dark and poorly editing that all hope for a salvageable or even a watchable movie is shattered. Just to provide an example of how flat the action is: a river chase at one stage sees Jack's speedboat heading for a randomly-placed ramp in the waterway. The music swells, the comic relief sidekick yelps, and the boat jumps the ramp in the most unspectacular and drab manner imaginable. No explosions, near-misses, great heights or great distances - this boring minor stunt is treated as a major money shot. All the shootouts, meanwhile, are hindered by Boll's cinematic technique. The bad guys do stupid things, the cinematography is sloppy (even comedies contain more pulse-pounding car chases), the editing is terrible, and the action set-pieces come across as very amateurish, ordinary and bland. The music is woefully ineffectual, and the pacing is constantly uneven - the film drags when it should be brisk.

If Boll had aimed for just a straightforward '80s-style action movie, it would still have been an uninspired filmic turd, but the entire enterprise is further soured by the shamefully asinine attempts at humour. The abysmal screenplay - which took three people to ruin - serves up every single action movie cliché in the book in terms of both dialogue and plot, in addition to being loaded with sophomoric punch-lines which fail so miserably one could swear they were witnessing jokes that belong in Disaster Movie. For instance Valerie has no idea what a hand grenade is, and thus, when she throws one without pulling the pin, Jack explains "You have to pull the pin. They're useless with the pin!". Several "humorous" set-pieces are also thrown in which provoke sickness rather than laughter. The main offender: Jack and Valerie are nearly killed in a car chase shootout and wind up trapped on the deserted island with armed guards hunting them, and end up in an isolated shack. Rather than taking the situation seriously, they strip down, climb into bed, and engage in off-screen sex. All this provides is a running joke, with Jack continually asking Valerie to rate how he was in the sack on a scale of 1-10 and her repeatedly emasculating him with very low scores.

Before long, the terrible scripting gives way to excruciating acting with the introduction of a nails-on-chalkboard irritating comic relief sidekick: the dim-witted Emilio (Coppola). He replaces Valerie as Carver's sidekick halfway through the movie when Carver sneaks up on him to knock him out, but inadvertently saves the fatty from choking. A grossly overweight food delivery person caught in the crossfire, Emilio looks like a poor man's Wayne Knight. And on the topic of awful acting, German action star Til Schweiger phones in a lazy performance as Jack Carver. Be on the lookout for Schweiger's three facial expressions: blank, smiling, and "tough guy face". His heavily accentuated acting is so embarrassingly phoney that it makes Arnold Schwarzenegger look comparatively nuanced. In fact, Schweiger sounds so much like Uwe Boll that if an audio commentary was ever recorded with the two men, it'd be impossible to discern which of them is talking at any one time. Added to this, most of the cast are clearly not native English speakers, and their awkward accents mixed with the clunky dialogue makes for some truly cringe-worthy acting. Over and over again, Boll has demonstrated that he has no concept of how to extract believable performances from actors. Any instances of convincing acting that exist in his films are surely just flukes.

A lot of the folks who are fed up with the Boll hatred claim that people hate his movies because they're stuck-up video game fans who whinge like babies. But me? I've never played Far Cry. I don't give a fuck if this is a disgrace to the Far Cry label. In fact, I've never played any games Boll has used as a basis for his movies. I'm judging Uwe Boll's adaptations as standalone movies. And as an individual film, Far Cry is fucking awful - bad effects, blah action, a weak, nonsensical script, and a disproportionate amount of German actors who struggle to deliver their lines in English with any semblance of drama. I could name countless movies that may not be quality cinema in a conventional sense, but are still a fun way to kill 90 minutes. Far Cry is not one of them.

0.5/10