Welcome, one and all, to an all new Reaction & Review. Tonight, ladies and gentlemen, I'm gonna be covering an Indonesian film from 2017. That movie is "Valentine: The Dark Avenger".
I'm gonna tell you, guys, I literally know almost nothing about this movie, outside of a couple of things. I know that it's an Indonesian action movie, and this movie is based off a comic book that I've never heard of, or read. What's strange, though, about this movie is that, when I was doing the small amount of research I did on this thing, apparently, this movie doesn't have a Wikipedia article. Which, to me, is kind of a bad sign. Now, it's probably just a baseless worry, and maybe I'm just getting concerned over nothing. Now, I've seen a copy of this movie a couple of times at one of my local videos stores, but I never had the opportunity to pick it up, because I wanted to focus on other movies and video games I wanted to buy. Thankfully, there is a copy of this thing on YouTube, so I'm gonna be watching it off of there, and see if I'm missing out on something good here.
Now, I had a bit of a hard decision on when to review this movie. You see, when I found out that this movie was based off a comic book, I was, originally, going to hold off on reviewing this thing for my next "Tales of the Longbox" marathon that I plan on doing at the beginning of next year. However, with what movies I've been currently building up for that marathon, I decided to just cover this movie now, so I don't have to worry about holding off on it any longer.
I'm hoping for this thing to be pretty good. And who knows? If this movie ends up being any good, I may check out the books that this character is based off of. But the only way I'm gonna know if thing is worth watching at all, is if I shut up, and I push play, and I'm gonna do that right now. So, without further ado, it's time to kick back, relax, and check out "Valentine: The Dark Avenger".
7 minutes later
...I am so glad you asked that, dude. The acting in this movie is terrible. Well, correction, the acting in this dub is terrible, so far. I totally understand that it's still early in this movie, but, right now, we're off to kind of a bad start.
9 minutes later
So, hold on a second here. So this first fight that Valentine has to go through is an actual robbery that's taking place. I have a couple of questions here. First of all, how did Bono know that there was going to be a robbery taking place at this exact convenience store? Does he, like, have connections to robberies being taken place at certain times? Moreover, why does Valentine's first fight have to take place while a robbery is going on? Don't you think it would make more sense to put her in something a little more tame like fighting gangs or something like that? I understand that all of this might sound trivial and fucking stupid, but, damn it, I would, at least, like to know how Bono even knows where to go to film his stupid movie. Quite frankly, I don't think I'm gonna get an answer to that, but, so far, this movie has already left me with a ton of questions and not a lot of answers.
10 minutes later
You know, guys, I never thought I would see two random thieves able to perform some of the most impossible jumps I've ever seen during a chase scene. Seems a little bit stupid, to me. Personally, I think you should just focus on escaping, rather than performing stunts while trying to get away. Just saying.
6 minutes later
You know, guys, I will say that the fight choreography in this movie is, actually, pretty good. Do you know what would make it better? If these fight scenes didn't rely so heavily on jump cuts. I swear to God, guys, this movie has a fucking obsession with these constant jump cuts during these fight scenes. It's actually ruining the fight scenes in this movie, to a point where I can't take any of it seriously. I kinda hope we see less of these jump cuts in later fight scenes, because, right now, this is starting to get a little tiresome.
16 minutes later
I didn't think this was possible, guys. But the jump cuts in these fight scenes are getting worse. I didn't think that was even possible, but, somehow, this movie found a way to make fight scenes look awful. That is just terrifying, guys.
10 minutes later
...Are you fucking serious? That is how Valentine got her name is because his daughter died in a car accident, who also happens to have the name Valentine? Guys, that is probably one of the dumbest ways you could name drop your title character. God, I really want this movie to be over and done with. And I gotta another...forty minutes of this crap to go.
15 minutes later
Guys, I am really hating this movie. I understand that I'm gonna have plenty of time ripping into this thing once this boring, pile of shit is over. But I just want to let you guys know now, so, that way, I can fully prepare myself to tear this shit apart once this thing is done. There's only 25 minutes left, and I'm am just counting down the seconds until I get to that moment.
The Review
Well, guys, that was "Valentine: The Dark Avenger". I'm gonna shut this garbage off...dear lord...I'm sorry, guys, but I'm trying to process what I just watched. Earlier, I mentioned that I was going to hold off on reviewing this movie until my next "Tales of the Longbox" marathon. Well...I think I saved myself from watching a terrible movie for that marathon. Because this movie almost offends me in ways that I didn't think were possible.
So, let's start with the writing. Now, as I stated earlier, this movie is based off a comic book that I've never read. So I don't even know if this movie is even half loyal to the source material it's adapting itself from. But, to be perfectly honest, I don't care if it's loyal to the source material or not, because I have no intention of ever reading those books. And this movie is clear proof of that. It's obvious, to me, that whoever wrote this movie, was a huge fan of Batman. Specifically, I'm referring to the "Dark Knight" trilogy, because this movie has so many elements from that trilogy that were shoehorned into this movie. To a point where I would almost consider this movie flagrantly ripping off the entire "Dark Knight" trilogy. And to prove my point even further about this writer being a fan of Batman, they even name dropped Batman twice in this movie. Not only that, but one of the villains in this movie has a logo on her chest that almost resembles the iconic Batman symbol from the 1989 movie. And, mind you, she wears that towards the end of the movie. And even Valentine, herself, is a poor, shallow, knockoff of Batman, because she has no powers, and she relies on her combat skills and handcuffs, which is the only "gadget" in this movie that she uses, even though there were more introduced in the middle of film, but that's not really important here. This movie does not hide the fact that this movie tries so hard to be like Nolan's "Dark Knight" trilogy, but here's the thing. For all of the faults that those movies had, at least they were trying to establish character development, stories that were decently written, and villains that weren't one dimensional. And this is what really pisses me off about this movie. It's not the fact that this movie "borrows" elements from the "Dark Knight" trilogy. I probably would've not minded any of that, but the very fact that this movie had to shamelessly name drop Batman's name in this movie twice is what really pisses me off. And it's not because Batman is my favorite comic book character. It's because this movie could not be asked to establish it's own original universe. It could not be asked to have an original character, that is not even in the same league as a character that has had decades of backstory and character development. You see, guys, if this movie did not drop Batman's name in this movie, I would've given this thing a lot less slack. At worst, I would've said that this movie is a shameless knockoff of Nolan's Batman films, and it would only remind me that I could be watching something better like "The Dark Knight Rises". But because this movie decided to commit a cardinal sin by name dropping Batman twice, the only thing that this movie really accomplished was that it's main character is an unoriginal, fourth rate, version of Batman. And that's all Valentine is ever going to be. At least, to me, that's what she's always going to remind me as.
Now, I'm gonna try to look past all of that...as hard as that's going to be. Let's talk about the rest of the writing. Now, I mentioned that this movie has a ton of elements from the "Dark Knight" trilogy, and it shows. We have a city that has a ton of crime, criminals that run free and rob anything they can, and we have a villain that wants to spread fear. I'll get to the villain in a moment. So how does our main character, Srimaya, get to be Valentine? Well, we have this guy named Bono, who's trying to make a superhero movie, and he wants to find a female that is beautiful and knows martial arts. And, what do you know, he finds Srimaya, who works as a waitress, that ends up beating the shit out of two guys, after they sexually harass a different waitress constantly. And that, apparently, is enough for him to go "Look! I've found our leading lady!". Mind you, he doesn't really say that, but that's what I was thinking of during that scene. And I guess she has no real say in this, because they end up shooting the first scene of the movie by beating up a bunch of thugs, who are robbing a convenience store...sure. Why not? Speaking of Bono, he's rather unlikable, because all he cares about is filming his retarded movie. Now, the movie tries to contemplate this by giving him a backstory about how his wife and daughter died during a car accident and how he lost one of his legs. And I would probably care more, if his character was more likable from the get go. But it wasn't. Also, I find it very classy that the reason how Valentine gets her name is because of Bono's dead daughter. Rather than leaving her name to rest, Bono had to shoehorn his daughter's name into a superhero, because, you know, that's totally not being disrespectful to the dead at all. We also have this gay hair stylist, who tries to film every fight Valentine gets into to get herself recognized online. He has no real character other than the fact that he's a gay stereotype...whoopie. I've already said plenty about Valentine, about how she's a fourth rate version of Batman. Speaking of which, because this movie tries so hard to be like the "Dark Knight" trilogy, we also have characters who I could easily say are flagrant knockoff of other Batman characters. Two really good examples of this would be the police commissioner, who is a fourth rate version of Commissioner Gordon. The other example of that would have to be our villain for this movie, Shadow. Shadow is, basically, a shallow, knock off of Bane from "The Dark Knight Rises". The only thing that's different about Shadow is that he doesn't have that stupid voice of Bane's, so, at least, I can give the movie that. Plus, he's really good at martial arts. Beyond that, though, our villains have no personality or depth to them. They're basically there for the sake of being there, and nothing else. And that could be said about every other character in this movie. So, writing here is a complete travesty, and it's one of the biggest sins that this movie commits.
What about the acting? Well, I can easily tell you that the dub for this movie is just awful. There are certain moments in this movie where you'll have some characters speaking, yet their dialogue goes on for another second or two. Now, that doesn't happen too often, but it's still noticeable. As for the acting itself, it's terrible. Almost nobody here turns in a showing that I would say is partially good. Now, maybe the Indonesian version of this movie has better acting, but I can't really gauge that, because I haven't seen a whole lot of Indonesian films. But the acting in this dub is just terrible. The only actor who turns in any kind of showing, that I would consider any good, is the actor who voices Shadow. But that could be attributed to the fact that Shadow speaks with, what I'm going to assume, is a voice changer. Still, though, at least the acting from him is passable. But, like I said, this dub makes this movie almost hard to watch. The worst actor comes from whoever voices Srimaya's brother. Oh my God, he phones it in so badly that it sounds like he took a dose of sleeping pills before he got a chance to record his lines. It is just that bad. Ultimately, guys, the acting here sucks. And it's just what it is, which is a terrible English dub.
Special effects here are, at least, halfway decent. We have quite a few explosions. Some of them were in CG, which looked kinda shitty, but everything else in terms of pyrotechnics looks decent. Makeup effects are pretty good. We also have quite a bit of practical blood, which also looks pretty good. In fact, for a low budget film, special effects in this movie are pretty decent. And that, I can totally say, works. So, special effects are the only real positive I can give this movie.
I want to talk about the fight choreography. I would love to tell you that the fight choreography in this movie is amazing, but there's one thing that ruins it entirely, which is the camerawork. There's two things that filmmakers should consider when doing fight scenes. The first, and most obvious, thing is that your actors should be trained on how to fight. And we do have that here. But the other thing makes it even more important is that you want to have your fight scenes flow naturally. A real good example of this would be "Bloodsport". All of the fights in that movie felt natural, and you could follow along with where the fight was going, because the camera focuses on the two fighters without making too many cuts. This movie, on the other hand, spends so much time up it's own ass with these constant jump cuts during these fight scenes, that none of it feels natural, and it really takes you out of the movie. So much so that all of them end up becoming unwatchable. On top of that, we also have a ton of shaky cam during these fight scenes. Now, when I say that, I'm not referring to the gay hair stylist that is trying to film this stupid movie for Bono, as he's trying to get a shot of Valentine in action. No, I'm referring to the actual camera operator who spends so much time with jump cuts and shaky cam. The shaky cam during these fight scenes is so bad, that it actually makes the shaky cam in "Batman Begins" look like fucking gold. Process that for a moment! How bad do you have to be in order for your camerawork to be worse than the shaky cam in "Batman Begins"? Apparently, this movie found a way. And it makes the fight choreography look like a complete afterthought.
Now...as for everything else. Lighting here is really good. Sound-mix is mixed properly. Music...for, like, the first half of the movie was completely forgettable. And then, mostly towards the end of the movie, it decides to borrow heavily from the "Dark Knight" trilogy. Well, more-so the latter two films in the "Dark Knight" trilogy. Because I could hear music that is very reminiscent of what I would hear in Nolan's Batman movies. And that shows, once more, that this movie doesn't have an original identity, and just wants to rip off the "Dark Knight" trilogy as much as possible.
So, when all is said and done, can I recommend "Valentine: The Dark Avenger"? Fuck no. This movie proved, to me, that it doesn't want to become something unique or different. Instead, the people who wrote this movie decided to take concepts of the "Dark Knight" trilogy and shamelessly rip it off, to a point where the comparisons are almost hard NOT to make. This movie borders on being unwatchable. And yes, I do know that this movie is free on YouTube. Do not waste your time on this thing. This movie was complete shit, and I am sorry I even considered wasting time on this fucking thing. But hey, you know what? This movie did, at least, remind me that I can watch a better movie involving Batman. And I have plenty of choices that I can pick out from my DVD collection. As much I would like to watch "The Dark Knight Rises" right now, I think I'm gonna go watch something shorter. I think I'm gonna go and watch my copy of "Batman: Under the Red Hood". Because that movie is really fucking good.
Anyway, guys, with that, we come to the close of another Reaction & Review. Until next time, ladies and gentlemen, take care, and I will see you all in the near future. Peace.
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