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Old 11-10-16, 07:31 PM   #1
Subnuts
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Default U-571 has met its match

So there's a new movie coming out this week titled USS Indianapolis: Men of Courage "starring" Nicholas Cage. Not surprisingly, it's terrible. Some choice review quotes:

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The film’s leaden treatment of this incredible story somehow sucks all the drama out of it.
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USS Indianapolis: Men Of Courage, which stars the pathologically available Nicolas Cage as the captain of the doomed ship, is equal parts cheap shark attack movie, crappy wartime weepie, and hackneyed courtroom drama.
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It’s probably time that critics stopped giving Nicolas Cage a reflexive poke for his glowering hambone performances — because, frankly, he’s now toning it down.
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CGI doesn’t get better with goofy looking shark attacks, adding a touch of “Sharknado” to the real-world terror of survivors floating for five days without supplies, facing the merciless trials of the ocean.
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coupled with the lousy visual effects used for the Japanese torpedoes that sink the Indianapolis and the leaping-out-of-the-water sharks that feed on the naval officers, make the proceedings feel like a Syfy Channel B-movie.
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Tom Sizemore as a crewman in a life raft screaming in agony and clutching his chomped-off leg like a teddy bear.
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“Men of Courage” doesn’t do justice to those men by being as half-hearted and clumsily-scripted as this film is.
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CGI that wouldn’t pass muster in a DTV Asylum title.
Darn it, why can't they make a good "boat movie" anymore?
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Old 11-11-16, 12:10 PM   #2
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Maybe because there have been so many great movies involving submarines, U boats and ships of every kind. It's difficult to make movies like that when the bar has been set so high with great acting and cinematography in previous movies.
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Old 12-22-16, 10:38 PM   #3
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Films about anything involving the high seas have long been a bane to the studios and producers. The sheer expense of making any sea-themed film usually gets any such project sent to the bottom of the production heap. Aside from the problems of the highly changeable environment of the sea making it very difficult to match shots in camera, the lack of sufficient actual vessels to match the period of the story means either you've got to build from scratch some sort of replica that can withstand the elements or you have to use CGI to flesh out the scenes, and really decent, believable CGI is really, really expensive, meaning either you've got to have a blockbuster project with big name stars, directors, etc. (Master and Commander leaps to mind) or you've got to be willing to take a long bet on a project that most likely will not be profitable and Hollywood is all about the profit. U-571 had a production budget of about US $62 million and grossed about US $127 million worldwide; the general rule of thumb is a film has to gross at least twice its cost in order to show any profit, so U-571, for all intents and purposes, just barely broke even. It should be noted the US $62 million budget figure was a projected budget; studios and producers rarely, if ever make public the exact final costs of a production, so the final cost could very well be considerably higher; also, the budget figure was given in year 2000 dollars and inflation will have reduced the actual value of the earnings...



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Old 12-23-16, 12:27 AM   #4
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Back in 1991 there was a TV movie called Mission Of The Shark, starring Stacy Keach as Cpt McVay. It had problems with a low budget, including substituting a destroyer for the light cruiser, but overall I liked it.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0102455/?ref_=nv_sr_1
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Old 12-25-16, 11:53 AM   #5
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I also saw that movie and it immediately came to mind when I saw the original post; you're right; in spite of low budget (a lot of TV movies have budgets running less than a lot of commercials for major advertisers), the film did have a rather god script, good storytelling, and very good performances. A good move overall; gets 4 out of 5 stars on Amazon with 48% of the reviews giving a 5 star rating...



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