In always game to give a B movie a day in court but it’s gotta at least put in a game effort and ‘4GOT10’ (whatever the fuck that means) is just the film equivalent of an hopelessly flaccid penis. It’s also called “The Good, The Bad & The Dead” on some posters which is marginally more coherent and is a good indicator of how dumb and dead on arrival this thing is. It’s sad because it has a great cast, who for the most part are stuck moping, drawling, clawing their way through terminally bloated scenes with nary an editor in sight and spewing scant, anemic dialogue. Johnny Messner is a terrific actor who seems to be permanently stranded in this kind of fare of late, which isn’t always the worst thing (paycheque is a paycheque) but not even his engaging presence can do anything for this hastily cut turd. He plays some sort of ex convict who awakens in the desert with amnesia, surrounded by dead guys, guns and cash. Some kind of deal clearly went south and it gets worse with the arrival of a corrupt scumbag sheriff (Michael Paré) who tries to finish Messner off and steal all the leftover cash. Also eventually on scene is a bored looking Dolph Lundgren as a rogue DEA enforcer, Vivica A. Fox as his blathering station chief, Danny Trejo as the angry cartel boss who I guess was trying to facilitate the deal and all kinds of other forgettable cutouts. This film makes the grave and silly mistake of introducing each character with a freeze frame title card like ‘the outlaw’, ‘the enforcer’, ‘the sheriff’, ‘the braud’ (I’m not even kidding on that one) etc and I don’t know about you but I fucking hate that obnoxious stylistic contrivance, it was never cool and certainly still isn’t now. I realize that these actors have families to feed, mortgages to pay off and whatnot but like… could they have at least aimed a *bit* higher than something as wantonly awful and as this? Like… I’ve participated in entry level student film productions that were literally better than this, this crew should all just quit their profession and work at McDonald’s if that’s the way they’re going to behave. It’s tragic and embarrassing, and this is from someone who loves watching an endless string of B grade trash just to see actors I like. It doesn’t even make that cut, and you should avoid it lest risk slipping into a diabetic fugue state at the sheer cinematic malnourishment this fucker exudes.
-Nate Hill
Podcasting Them Softly 