3 gibbles outta 5

Director – Ross Boyask

During my movie adventures, I’ve watched a handful of no-budgets.  It’s definitely a different genre of film, one that, when I undertook my strict “will watch anything from start to finish” policy, was unexpected.  It continually makes me wonder how these films get distribution – not in the sense of whether or not they deserve it, just as a general question.  I haven’t made a movie before, but it’s obvious to say that the rental business ain’t what it used to be anymore – you can’t just put a nice cover on the rack and hope that someone picks it up when they’re waiting for Transformers to get back in stock, because people can just download Transformers now, and your average commercial has a larger budget than most no-budgets.  ’10 Dead Men’ was financed by the director and producer’s (Phil Hobden) production company, then probably screened at some festival somewhere, then promoted probably, again, by a team close to the original crew, and more than likely pushed to a select audience of MMA magazines and websites and the like.  It’s all homegrown.  Some of these movies, then, come with an inflated sense of being awesome, and that it’s somehow more worthwhile that they did it all themselves even when the end product is utter shite (a lot of horror and the urban “life on the streets” no-budgets fall into this category).

Sometimes, though, there seems to be an honest effort from people who wanted to make a film and, for whatever reason, had to make it all themselves.  These films are very rare, but hopefully will lead to the right people seeing some promise and allowing people like Ross Boyask and Phil Hobden to continue pursuing their dreams with a little more capital (if that’s so desired).

’10 Dead Men’ isn’t a great film.  I wouldn’t be recommending it to anyone, and the fight audience that it’s aimed at will probably only really dig it if they’ve worked with some of the people in the film.  Regardless.  There’s a brief introduction by the duo mentioned above and it’s just silly and pointless but it sets up a good mood for the film, that they enjoyed making it and were happy with the end project.  The film is a revengey thing – an ex-assassin has tried to get out of the biz and set up with his lady friend.  A last “favor” to an old killing pal ends up getting him on the bad side of the wrong people, who kill the girl and intend to kill him.  10 men were involved in this attack… and so when our main character ends up not being dead, it is against 10 men who he takes his revenge.

Besides the aforementioned gusto with which this was put together, there are actually some nifty tidbits – the main character never speaks (until the very end), and there was actually a respectably surprising last revelation.  The budget is used well, spreading out the squibs and explosions with some location compromises that all work to serve as backdrops for the simple story.  Alas, it still is a no-budget, which means the acting never is that great.  It’s better than the norm for what I’ve seen, but the lead character’s grimacing is embarrassing, and the scenes between he and his ladyfriend are wooden.  The mic-ing also leaves something to be desired in the flashback scenes and the general structure of the story – using those flashbacks – is unnecessarily cluttered and uses a distracting editing style.

Blah blah blah.  If you like experimenting with films and fight choreography is your bag, ’10 Dead Men’ is an interesting way to go.  It ain’t great, but it’s honest.