Reviews

This is the kind of film that Hallmark or Lifetime channels have made a mint producing. Standard, paint-by-numbers "plot" with zero surprises. Why didn't someone wake up Barbara Hershey? Did she think she was in a Night of the Living Dead sequel? Some producer must've seen the completed film and said a "love interest" should be included at the last second so this would be a good date movie. So after Ms Hershey grits her teeth for 70 minutes, Coach gives her a kiss in a cornfield (corny? You BET!) with ten minutes to go in the film. Yawn. And Dennis Hopper was severely under-used as a drunken savant, the Rainman of basketball, who knows everything about each and every high school team in the state. Oh, spoiler alert: the shortest kid in the history of high school b'ball wins a key game! Yes! Oh, so inspiring! This movie is so ridiculous it almost makes 'Rudy' look good. I said "almost".

About a third of the way into this I was thinking it a somewhat Cormac McCarthy-esque type of film, only without the good writing. But, still, interesting in a fashion. Then it falls off the rails. Sure, life was brutal for women in the day, but none of the female characters here helped themselves at all, only made the absolute worst decisions at the worst times. Also, most men are horrible jerks or criminals, and the very few good men are dumb as oxen. Finally, why don't film characters ever realize that guns are NOT knives? You don't have to get so close to someone as to touch them--or allow them to take your gun and kill you with it. Oh, that's right: BAD WRITING! Stand back a few feet and just pull the trigger WITHOUT the grandstanding speech. Sheesh! That's where I booked out, end of third act. Too late for me; save yourselves, and take a pass.

This clunker runs through the usual clichés, from everybody making the absolutely wrong decision (like splitting up and walking into the woods alone)to the cell phones not working. But the only interesting thing is . . .

SPOILER: An entire car of people just vanishes like Richie Cunningham's older brother. The ticket agent/guard walks through the cars and in one of them meets two young women, a vanilla dude, and an old bag with an angry dog. After the train stops, those folks are never again seen, just written out of the script. They aren't attacked, as ALL of the passengers meet up front to yell at the crew, except these four are nowhere to be seen, long gone before any monster shows up. Little things like that are a distraction. Makes this '6' movie a '4'.