Armed and Deadly

December. 27,2011      PG-13
Rating:
2.3
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Trailer Synopsis Cast

Janis witnessed her twin brother kill their parents. Twenty years later, she waits for him to come to kill her for her testimony that put him away. Trained in martial arts, she's ready. All Janis wants is closure.

Lisa Varga as  Janis McKenzie
Audrey Landers as  Audrey Landers

Reviews

ChanBot
2011/12/27

i must have seen a different film!!

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RipDelight
2011/12/28

This is a tender, generous movie that likes its characters and presents them as real people, full of flaws and strengths.

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Fairaher
2011/12/29

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

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Nayan Gough
2011/12/30

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

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Patrick Smith
2011/12/31

Im sad... Im sad because the lowest rating I could give is 1. I wish there was a way to give zero stars. Movies like this teach me that just about anyone can be in a movie if they wanted to.cringed the entire time, I'm not sure which is more fun, watching this movie or watching paint dry.I could write a novel as to why its so bad, no attention to detail, Low budget, complete absence of any acting, embarrassing plot, but I wont bother. Doing so would give this movie too much credit/attention. If you haven't seen the movie yet the time you've already taken to look at this review is too much for the quality of this movie.If you want to watch a movie and laugh at how bad it is, watch Submerged, at lease you've got washed out ex-B grade actor Steven Seagal entertaining you, and that movie is "laughable bad" this one isn't. Disgrace to the film industry, and insulting to anyone who spent any amount of money to watch.

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Josh P
2012/01/01

A wonderful urban romp that will leave the entire family Inspired. Armed and Deadly offers a grave insight into the human condition. It plays upon the audiences emotions and as we draw closer to the denouement, loose ends and sowed seeds coalesce in a masterclass of modern cinematic wonder. The edgy conclusion offers an arrested epiphany, a question about the morality of murder in self defence and the torment of trauma induced psychosis is never answered but rather the writers challenge one to think and to reach the prestige on ones own. Andrzeij Mrotek, like Camron and Spielberg before him has asserted himself as one of the greats by holding a tainted mirror before the audience and asks " Do you like what you see?"Absolutely breathtaking, a modern masterpiece! Genius, Genius, Genius!

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Netjer-y-khet
2012/01/02

Someone wrote, "Bravo!!! Bravo!!! Bravo!!!" Perhaps the person who wrote that was watching a tadpole race.At not much more than two minutes in there's the worst acting I've seen in years. Some guy playing a character named "Sergeant Carlyle" was desperately trying to put on some kind of weird accent, only he was making a complete dog's breakfast of it. Perhaps he was trying to sound like a Kiwi (New Zealander). Anyway, whatever accent it was, that scene sets the top bar for the rest of the actors in this boring tripe. Sadly, none of the large cast get close to doing any better.If you want to completely waste one hour and forty minutes of your life then this movie is for you. But mark my words; at three minutes in you'll be hoping that Corporal Janis McKenzie clambers aboard a military aircraft and jumps out from a great height... with a concrete parachute.

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diasaa-655-335435
2012/01/03

I caught this film at the 2010 Sarasota film festival. While watching, I definitely got the sense that I was looking at an unfinished film, performed by terrible actors, and based on the first draft of a script that tries so hard to jam in all the clichés of the genre that it leaves no room for anything else.To start off with, the film LOOKS bad. We were told that the film was shot on an expensive digital video camera designed to give it a more film-like look. That may be, but the end result was something that looked nothing at all like a Hollywood movie... heck I've seen student films that look more like a movie than this. Maybe it was the bad lighting, maybe it was the frame-rate, but something made it look like the film was shot on an expensive home video camera. This immediately gave the sense that we were watching actors, not characters.The acting certainly didn't help with that feeling. It was like watching kids reciting lines. I say with no hyperbole that there isn't a single performance in the film that even approached good acting. Right from the beginning we're treated to one actor that is so bad that you cringe at his every line. You welcome the fact that he dies so early in the film, but regret that everybody else sticks around for the next 90 minutes. I say this not too pick on them. It could very well be the fault of the director, or more likely the writer.Half of bad acting is bad writing, and this script stands in a category of its own. It's clear that no thought whatsoever was put into characters. Early on, the main character explains that she was an English major... which goes a long way toward explaining why she's a... photographer. The real reason she was a photographer is so that they could visit all the "cool" places in Sarasota in long scenes that did little to develop the characters or advance the plot. Why were these scenes in there? Because Sarasota is cool I guess. Don't you want to see Sarasota?The dialogue is also cringe-worthy, clunky, and forced. This may be in part due to the bad acting, but it's difficult to picture even Tom Hanks delivering some of these lines convincingly. Later in the film, the protagonist meets a middle-aged white guy that speaks perfect English, but we're told that he's actually an Arab terrorist that had reconstructive surgery... uh huh. There's suspension of disbelief, there's checking your brains at the door, and then there's this movie.A bad movie can still be watchable if it's quickly paced, but this film just plods. We spend most of the film waiting for action and suspense that never really fully come, and when they do, our interests have long since disappeared. The fight and action sequences are so poorly directed that they wouldn't be any fun to watch anyway, so I guess it doesn't matter.This could have all been salvageable if they were going for a high camp factor, but it just took itself too seriously. In festivals, the audience usually tries to be polite about laughing at a bad film because the filmmakers are present, but by the end of my screening the audience couldn't hold it in any more. The first thing the director said in the Q and A was that he didn't know the film was a comedy, and mistakenly thought that the audience was laughing for good reasons. In many ways the film is reminiscent of Tommy Wiseau's cult hit The Room, but the pacing is too slow to excel to such levels of of accidental comedy. All the factors are in place however, and if they lose about 40 minutes off the run time, and spread the word-of- mouth, it might just be the next "The Room." As it stands however, the film is going to have no appeal whatsoever outside of Sarasota.The reason I felt the need to write this review is that I felt swindled into seeing it. In the film guide, it had a pretty interesting description, and the trailer does a great job of making it look watchable. In fact, there were four screenings which sold out! (although I doubt that would have happened if half the audience didn't work on or know somebody that worked on the film) I'm pretty open to films of all kinds, even amateur ones, but this one clearly had a budget that exceeded what you would expect from amateurs. Watching this was like watching money being fed to cows, and being processed into crap. Why didn't they hire a director with some experience? Pay someone to revamp the script? Or find actors that could give a convincing performance? I guess then they wouldn't be able to afford the fancy camera and superfluous helicopter shot. I write this review in hopes that I might prevent one person from making the same mistake I did... spending good money to waste 2 hours of their lives.

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