Man Down. (15.)
Directed by Dito Montiel.
Starring Shia LaBeouf, Jai Courtney, Gary Oldman, Kate Mara, Charlie Shotwell and Clifton Collins. 88 mins.
Man Down is one of those films that peeks your curiosity simply because nothing about it seems to make sense. You have a fairly esteemed cast, a cast that says cinema release, in a drama about an Afghan vet who returns to a post apocalyptic America to search for his family, a synopsis which suggests straight-to-video, or straight to streaming or wherever it is cheap lost film go straight to these days. Before it starts you wonder where on earth they are going with this; once the film starts you are none the wiser.
Partly they are going for a Walking Dead episode with no zombies, with LaBeouf and Courtney wandering through an inexpensively rendered American wasteland. Elsewhere we have the two old friends signing up to be marines and LaBeouf trying to do the best for his wife (Mara) and son (Shotwell.) And in yet another strand we have Labeouf being interviewed in Afghanistan by Gary Oldman, looking a little like the barman in the Shining, who is trying to ascertain how he is coping after an incident in the field. This strand will feed in to its own little flashback sequence.
And for an hour it is all something of a mystery, until a point in the closing stretches when the film suddenly comes together and reveals what it was aiming at all along. And when the reveal comes it is pretty satisfying and it makes sense but I think it is probably too late to fully justify what has come before it. The word that best describes Man Down is decent: the acting, the writing, the intentions but ultimately it doesn't quite work.
Directed by Dito Montiel.
Starring Shia LaBeouf, Jai Courtney, Gary Oldman, Kate Mara, Charlie Shotwell and Clifton Collins. 88 mins.
Man Down is one of those films that peeks your curiosity simply because nothing about it seems to make sense. You have a fairly esteemed cast, a cast that says cinema release, in a drama about an Afghan vet who returns to a post apocalyptic America to search for his family, a synopsis which suggests straight-to-video, or straight to streaming or wherever it is cheap lost film go straight to these days. Before it starts you wonder where on earth they are going with this; once the film starts you are none the wiser.
Partly they are going for a Walking Dead episode with no zombies, with LaBeouf and Courtney wandering through an inexpensively rendered American wasteland. Elsewhere we have the two old friends signing up to be marines and LaBeouf trying to do the best for his wife (Mara) and son (Shotwell.) And in yet another strand we have Labeouf being interviewed in Afghanistan by Gary Oldman, looking a little like the barman in the Shining, who is trying to ascertain how he is coping after an incident in the field. This strand will feed in to its own little flashback sequence.
And for an hour it is all something of a mystery, until a point in the closing stretches when the film suddenly comes together and reveals what it was aiming at all along. And when the reveal comes it is pretty satisfying and it makes sense but I think it is probably too late to fully justify what has come before it. The word that best describes Man Down is decent: the acting, the writing, the intentions but ultimately it doesn't quite work.
