Street

The headline says it all. I watched this title on Netflix and it was terrible. at many points I said wow this acting is on par with a High School drama club putting their first play together, or wow their are extras that means people were worse than our leads. a terrible scrip that was basically a bad mix between rocky and fighter ( a decent channing tatum flic) with laughable dialog. porn quality acting between the love interests (like the director had to have stolen them from an adult DVD) and fight scenes that had sound editing that the average you tuber could do better, it may have been low budget but it was also low effort which is why the movie was bad. But its like a car wreck, terrible but you can't stop watching. however the WOW as you keep watching is that it gets worse.

Whew, this was a tough one to sit through. I'm good friends with a member of the cast (who will remain nameless in this review) I was curious why he didn't hound me to check out his latest film. Normally, I get overwhelmed with requests from him to watch his work, now I see why. I'll try to keep this as professional as possible but I have to be honest like I always am. Lets start with the cast, my friend withstanding, this cast was just flat out awful. The lead Beau Smart carrying the lead of a film is about as far fetched as me playing CF for my beloved Dodgers next season, sounds great in fantasy land but in reality it would be an epic fail. In spite of his clear shortcomings as an actor, much less a lead, the supporting cast is almost as bad. Even my friend, who is definitely a strong actor, falls a bit short on bringing his character to life. This tells me one thing, the director let down the cast. Now, I believe the director was clearly in over his head, but giving him all the blame would be like a NFL team firing their head coach after a 2-14 season. The players still have to play and this cast just wasn't up for the challenge and/or simply aren't skilled enough. Enough on the cast and the director, nothing really redeeming on those fronts.

The story? Well, my first response would be "what story?." A film like this isn't really designed to captivate an audience through story telling, I get that, but at least make an effort. The martial arts aspect is clearly the star of this film, but it's not strong enough to carry the film throughout. The story becomes very predictable, almost hokey which it was not intended to be at all. The very underwhelming, and at times embarrassingly bad, cast doesn't help infuse anything that would be even loosely considered interesting. What is most frustrating about this film is that they obviously stole story lines from other films, which is fine because it's really a common practice nowadays in cinema. The difference is that when most films do this, they enhance the story they are ripping off, Street actually lifted these story lines and went the other way by watering them down, like watching the cinematic version of skim milk.

Technically the film was fine, considering its a low budget project. There were a few issues, mainly lighting and a few focus pulls, but nothing that compares to the misfortune that was the unfortunate combination of acting, directing and writing. This marks the lowest rating of any film that I have ever reviewed. I love indie films and the filmmakers that put so much into bringing their work to life, but this project just failed miserably on all the key aspects.

Remo Street is a former wrestling champion who spends his days job searching and forces himself to train at night whenever and however he can. It seems his life long dream of becoming a professional MMA fighter escapes him until one night when a door is opened and he is given the opportunity of a lifetime.

The film is definitely great for its budget and the quality is that of many digital features out there. It's amazing what they can do these days in film and STREET is a great example of being resourceful with your knowledge with skilled actors and crew. It's an action packed non stop film that you really shouldn't pass up.

This movie for SURE would have been better if the lead was not Beau Smart. This guy cannot act at all. I imagine he got this role because Jennifer Lopez is his girlfriend. Not a bad story, but this guy Beau Smart should get smarter and go back to dancing. I love fighter movies and thought this would be good. Again, it was a good story . Most of the acting was pretty good. it dragged a bit, but I think I was out of my mind because Beau's NON acting was driving me crazy so it felt like the movie was 100 hours long. They keep telling me my review is not long enough but I do not know what else to say. The plot was not bad and I thought Beau's acting was terrible. What else to write. Better cast next time.

The general acting is OK for a zero budget movie like this. It is FAR from good but the bigger problem than the actor's abilities is the horrible directing. The whole make of the movie looks like a film school project of a beginners class and that's 50% the director's fault. 40% of the rest that is bad is on the seriously bad and cheap production. I wouldn't be surprised if it was made over the course of two weekends with a budget of less than 10.000$.

The story is predictable but if you watch a movie of this type you are probably a martial arts fan and can forgive a lot. I know I have enjoyed movies with a story that's worse if the action rocks. So how about the fights? In few and fitting words: Unimaginative and boring. You can see that Beau Casper Smart has the moves - being a professional dancer it comes as no surprise. But it seems the choreographer has no experience choreographing fight scenes. It looks like he watched a few MMA fights, then made up a list of moves that he thinks are typical, pressed shuffle and just went with the outcome. There are barely any dynamics in the fights, the camera angles are boring and mostly sub par, the cuts feel like someone said "hey, don't forget a cut and angle change there, dude" at some point.

I think if you put a real fight choreographer in charge of the fights, give the camera to someone who's used one for more than a couple of family vacations and make sure the director isn't stoned or on the crapper while the action is happening you could get some really good results out of Beau Casper Smart. Comparing his acting to Van Damme or Segal he actually looks pretty good. Compare him to Scott Adkins, though, and you see he still has a loooong way ahead of him. But I'd definitely watch it if he gave another martial arts flick a try.