Not very impressive horror/comedy muddle
STAR RATING: ***** Saturday Night **** Friday Night *** Friday Morning
** Sunday Night * Monday Morning There seems to be a Breach of the Trade Descriptions Act going on with a lot of these straight to video action films, where the cover gives the wrong impression of what sort of movie it's going to be and even puts a lead star on the front cover that doesn't actually have that much screen time. Vinnie Jones does end up getting a bit more coverage than it first looks like he will, but he's still missing for quite a bit of it and certainly doesn't feel like the main player in it all. And while it looks from the cover like another one of his straight to DVD action films, it's actually more of a messy, jumbled horror/comedy sort of film that goes to both extremes with each genre. Actually, this is Jones's second collaboration with, and the second feature film of director Brendan Foley, following his equally disastrous debut The Riddle, where Jones was also the lead. But here everything's really lumpen, with truly cheap looking production values, an incomprehensible, incoherent plot and Jones doing his usual silent, grumpy hard man act with some really flat dialogue to chew off. All this and a big, ogre some killer going around bumping everyone off. I'm really not sure what anyone was trying to get at with this one. Jones should try and get back in theatres and Foley should think about packing it in. *. 
All Bogged Down*
(* pun intended)
The only good thing about Legend Of The Bog is some good Irish scenery. Other than that there's pretty much nothing else to recommend. It starts off looking like it's going to be a fairly entertaining zombie type movie with Vinnie Jones doing an impersonation of Rupert Everett in Cemetery Man (or is it Dellamorte Dellamore?) but it goes downhill pretty fast when we meet the rest of the cast. The characters are mostly obnoxious. We've got the ugly American and her driver, a despicable b---h she is, an idiot he; the pretty American and her pal, nothing more than kill fodder; the egghead archaeologist and college student, first she hates, him then she loves him, then she accidentally stabs him with a sharp stick; last we have the hunter, a character who's motives are pretty much a mystery, a one-dimensional cardboard cutout played by Vinnie Jones. They all get stranded through various mishaps in Jones' hunting shack near the bog. Speaking of Jones, why isn't this guy in better movies? He virtually stole the show in The Condemned a few years back. I thought it was going to be a springboard to better things. Maybe he's difficult or something. Anyway, the bog creature is really just a prehistoric oaf, acting a bit like the titular character from Eegah!, reanimated through some means never explained. Also never explained is what all these people having killed someone beforehand has to do with the rest of the movie.(If you haven' seen this yet, don't ask.) It's hinted that it has something to do with what's happening but never elaborated on. If you make it to the end, please fast forward through the college girl's vomit inducing story and flashback. Then again maybe you like incest and stillborn inbred babies but it made me a bit queasy! Yuck!. |
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