Director: Daniell Nelson
Distributor: Amazon Instant Video/CreateSpace
Genre: Urban/Adventure
Running Time: 127 mintues
Budget: $5,000
Expected Rating: R due to Language
Website: N/A
Trailer: Click Here
Digital Rental: Click Here
Digital Purchase: Click Here
Reviewer: Jeremy T. Hanke
Final Score: 1.0 (out of 10)
[Editor’s Note: The point of the Straight Shooter review is to help film fans decide whether to give an Indie film a shot or not. It’s designed for films that’ve been polished enough so that the filmmakers feel they’re ready for a national release.
For films that are not ready for wide release, we offer film critiques—which are designed to help people make better films—because Straight Shooter reviews can seem pretty heartless if your film isn’t ready. The choice, however, is left to the filmmaker as to which place they should submit their film.
Unfortunately, this is a film where the filmmakers would’ve done well to read through our articles on filmmaking before releasing this film. Probably the best single book I could suggest for the future for adventure or action filmmakers would be the DV Rebel’s Guide by Stu Maschwitz. -JH]
Strange things happen when you’re in a city and you decide to make a film.
The Law of Sin is about such an idea.
Story
Two guys with extremely hard to understand accents decide to make a film. How will they make it? I’m not sure, because this 2 hour film about people making a film was so hard to watch (or listen to or understand) that I stopped watching after 8 minutes. Why? Read on.
Watchability
I have endured far more problematic low-budget films than most people and, while this one is not THE worst film I’ve been exposed to, it’s definitely amongst the most problematic I’ve seen. It’s not just the visuals, which are joltingly dissimilar from one another or how randomly they’re cut together, but it’s also the mumbled, inaudible dialogue, the clashing soundtrack, and piercingly discordant sound effects. The acting, while not good, wasn’t nearly as distracting as the technical problems.
As a film viewer, if I were to stumble across this film on YouTube, I’d assume it was made by shooting a bunch of shots on a smartphone and then allowing a mash-up app to create an edit of it through random selection. If that were the case, this film might go down as a cult classic, sort of like The Room, but I highly doubt that was how it was created or what the filmmaker’s intent was.
How Far Did you Watch Through It:
6% (8 minutes out of 127 minutes.)
Why?
Because of everything I mentioned in the Watchability section.
Closing Thoughts
Movies ABOUT moviemaking are almost always the kiss of death, just by themselves. (The only way to sneak them by is to make them about actors, such as in the movie, Swingers, and the show, Entourage, or to hide filmmakers in another story, such as JJ Abram’s Super8.) With that said, this film had too many issues before they even got to the filmmaking part of the story for this issue to become noticeable. Who knows, maybe this is a film that became an amazing movie after the first 8 minutes. If so, then hopefully they’ll chop off the first 8 minutes and show that amazing movie more quickly to their audience.
Final Score:
1.0 – Not Ready for Release
Jeremy T. Hanke
The director of two feature length films and half a dozen short films, Jeremy Hanke founded MicroFilmmaker Magazine to help all no-budget filmmakers make better films. The second edition of his well-received book on low-budget special effects techniques, GreenScreen Made Easy, (which he co-wrote with Michele Yamazaki) is being released by MWP in fall 2016. He's curently working on the sci-fi collaborative community, World of Depleted, and directed the debut action short in this series, Depleted: Day 419 .