Reviews

It makes me sad that there is only one review for this movie and it's an inaccurate vague review that doesn't really address the movie.

Scrap Heaven is a tight, interesting, character driven story about three strangers tossed together when they all end up on a doomed bus ride. But that's just the way they met. The moments of dark comedy effortlessly lead right into moments of poignancy. For me, this hit all the 'indie movie' buttons.

It's not an action flick, it's not a comedy, it's not an outright drama, it's not a romance movie, it's not a buddy movie, it's not a cop drama, it's not an outsider movie but it's a little bit of all of that and really rings true when it all concludes. Overall it feels very human and real. Never overplayed and it never tries too hard. Come with your open mind but not on a day when you can't take a dark movie.

Reading through other reviews it seems a lot of people are hung up on this being a "revenge" picture or an "exploitation" picture. I think it's being far too narrow to call it either. Don't go into this expecting gore, sex, and action. This isn't that type of movie and if that's all you want out of it you're going to be disappointed. As revenge pictures go Ms.45 keeps the actual act being revenged brief, in the periphery, and basically just suggested and not explicitly shown. The real story here is what Thana does next, and then after that, and then after that. Watching someone who wasn't quite right to begin with (she was shut down and withdrawn from the beginning) choose their path in dealing what had happened to them was interesting. You go from rooting for her to eventually realizing how far wrong she's gone. It's a pretty stark victim to victimizer scenario but with Ferrara's fantastic camera work throughout. His love of New York really shines through as well. It's easy to see the film maker he was becoming. Ms. 45 isn't without its issues - but it's a surprisingly solid movie that sticks in your head for days.

If you are just as baffled by the comments here as I was - there's a reason for that. You, like me, enjoy the silly, slapstick, over-the-top, incredibly goofy type of Hong Kong flick that this is. It amazed me that anyone watched this movie expecting some sort of high brow, high energy action flick. It's called "Anna in Kung Fu Land" for American audiences so I took that as a HINT. Expecting THIS MOVIE to be anything other than goofy would be like expecting "It's a Drink, It's a Bomb" to be a high-drama crime thriller.

Is this a romantic picture? No. Is this an action picture? No. Is this an incredibly goofy comedy? YES. If you enjoy movies on par with City Hunter and the recent spate of Korean romantic comedies (like "My Sassy Girl" and the definite rip-off "Marrying Schoolgirl") then this is definitely worth a look.

Don't look for high concept, don't look for high drama, don't look for believability or get annoyed when something is "illogical". Check your brain at the door and enjoy the goofiness.

Equilibrium blind-sided us because we couldn't imagine that Christian Bale and Sean Bean would be in such a horrendously written film. We kept looking for the humor - the wink that would let us know it was a parody. It never materialized.

So we knew that Wimmer would produce another incredible, outlandish, horrendous, execrable film. But this honestly sunk lower than that. Much. Much. Lower. I understand eye candy for the sake of eye candy. I understand checking your brain at the door and enjoying the pretty pictures. I understand spending the budget on after effects and forgetting to hire actual actors. I even understand the people who think that Wimmer is some sort of visionary and not the repetitive hack he clearly is. I appreciate the occasional 'really dumb but really pretty' movie.

The CGI exteriors (anywhere that they were not in a small, highly lit room) were one long video game cut scene using outdated source technology. They looked terrible. The glaring high beam of the visual style loses its punch about 5 minutes in so the rest of the film that could have been eye candy is just one long overly stylized nightmare of fuzz filters and geometric interiors. The basic plot - okay - fine... battle between the establishment (religion + government=evil again, just like Equilibrium) and those it had decided to exterminate (just like Equilibrium)... trite, annoyingly easy, and poorly laid out.

If you're banking on style - you need to HAVE a style and that style needs to be fairly unique and not an obvious aping of your own and other's films. And if your characters are going to be trite two dimensional idiots - at least make them CONSISTENT trite two dimensional idiots. And if you're going for an action film, hire an action director who understands what actually makes sense on screen instead of relying on what would "look cool" on paper or in a comic book.

Immediately after watching this movie - we watched Blood Rayne. And Uwe Boll managed to look like Spielberg in comparison. If you're prepared to have your intelligence insulted over and over again for 90 minutes - this movie is worth it just to see what some studios are willing to bank roll.