DOWNRANGE Review – Yet Another Road Trip Turns Into A Giant Rolling Ball Of S**t
Starring Kelly Connaire, Stephanie Pearson, Rod Hernandez-Farella
Written by Ryuhei Kitamura, Joey O’Bryan
Directed by Ryuhei Kitamura
Ryuhei Kitamura’s sniper-iffic feature film Downrange is one of those “waste no time whatsoever” movies that literally drops you directly into the belly of the beast and waits for you to find your own way out, regardless if you’re enjoying the ride or not.
Six pals – road trippin’ – one blown tire…all adding up to MANY shots fired from the very unforgiving business end of an assassin’s rifle, itchy trigger-finger and all – the only problem is that this particular dynamic can grow a bit weak when stretched out over the course of 90 minutes. With this specific gaggle of newly-minted friends and the happenings of their most unfortunate highway experience takes place, we’re left to wonder if this is all just a random act of unkindness towards commuters in general, or is there more to the story that is being let on? Well, unfortunately for the casual viewer, we’ve got to sift through a tedious marathon of uninteresting banter between passengers that really doesn’t provide anything other than time being chewed up before the lead starts to fly. After bullet #1 manages to inflict some serious damage, the movie tears into safeguarding mode, with a panicky band of meat-slabs doing whatever they need to do to keep their asses intact.
I love Kitamura’s work – don’t get me wrong, but Downrange felt as if it knew that its pulse was about to tread into the nonexistent range, then speedballed itself back to life with an absolutely insane injection of grindhouse-like action and implausibility – for those yearning for a balls-out thriller with no apologies (or foundation, for that matter), this one’s right up their alleyway. My rating on this one will rest SOLELY upon the Jekyll/Hyde contrasts between the film’s first and second-half parts, because in the end of it all I can sum it up like this: people riding in car, people get shot at…lots of screaming…lots more bullets flying – film over. Fun? For someone who might like their movies laid out like a jigsaw puzzle with no edges or colors, but I’m needing a bit more structure with my slaughter these days.
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Downrange
Summary
Don’t like a whole lot of endless banter from pedestrian actors? Just fire some hot lead in their path and watch the attitudes change.
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