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Reviews
Standoff (2016)
Needs more cowbell
Good performances, but overall thoroughly unbelievable plot. Sade (Fishburne), a contract killer, murders several people at a funeral then is forced to chase down a witness, Bird( Ballentine), a small girl who stumbles onto the scene. She runs to the nearest house, owned by Carter (Jane), a grieving vet contemplating suicide who responds to Sade's attempt to kill him by retreating into the house after a brief gun fight in which both killer and defender are wounded. The plot is set and the holes start to add up from here.
Sade, the master criminal, needlessly exposes himself at the initial site, even though he uses a rifle for the first two murders (a priest and a bodyguard) he decides to perform the final hit at close range with a pistol. His reasoning for this is never explained. Neither is his reasoning for hanging around the crime scene to fill in the grave to begin with, then throwing in the rifle, but retaining the pistol (which would be far more likely than the rifle to link him to the crime).
In his haste to dispatch the last witness, he is wounded by the owner of the house. The writer overlooks the fact that this would be the time to retreat, as he would have no way of knowing how many or how well armed the defenders might be. Sade then returns to his, "I got all the time in the world" mode as the standoff develops with him on the ground floor and Bird and Carter on the second. More holes develop as a cop spots the automobiles left by the witnesses uncle (who is also murdered as he looks for Bird) and the original intended victim. He has a "gut feeling" there is a problem, but never bothers to call in the tag numbers to the vehicles despite this being SOP with every PD in the country. He doesn't bother to call in his exit from the vehicle, something that is also SOP, either. It's all down hill from here as Sade shoots him through the door (knowing he's a cop yet forgetting the cops theses days wear vests for just such an event). Luckily for him this cop has also forgotten SOP on vests and isn't wearing one. Good performances by Fishburne, Jane and Ballentine,along with an atmospheric set, wasted on a poor script written by someone who apparently doesn't know the difference between a .45 and a 9mm or that burning farmhouses give off clouds of smoke, something sure to attract attention in such a rural setting.
In summation, Standoff falls down before it begins. Too bad.
The Legend of Blood Mountain (1965)
A few words on Bestoink Dooley
Bestoink Dooley (George Ellis) was the host of The Friday Night Big Movie Shocker! shown at 11:00 PM on the Atlanta area CBS Affiliate WAGA.Later it was also shown on Saturday mornings at the end of the "kiddie" line up. George and his brother later purchased and managed the Ansley Mall Film Forum in Atlanta. As bad as "Blood Mountain" might have been, his taste in films was excellent. I saw numerous cult films, such as "A Boy and His Dog", and "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" at the Forum, along with other great movies like Zefferelli's "Brother Sun, Sister Moon" and "Ballad of Narayama". I'd love to get a video of "Blood Mountain", are there any out there?