Extermi-Nate

loved this film. my favorite from the heat. great cinematography! Great Cinematography

Probably my favourite of the Christchurch School teams.
This is so funny and energetic.
The one liners, Nate's impatience with his hackerman, the villain monologue, the title card...
The team really understood the assignment when it came to the genre of "80s Action Movie".
And I must applaud the hilarity of someone's hands desperately assisting a tumble down the stairs from off screen. Hilarious!
The real promise which this team shows is their parodying of specific tropes.
Nate being so easily convinced to come out of retirement is SO FUNNY. That and the one ultra-tough henchman who's not wearing a shirt really show an understanding of the genre.
I'm sure the team know what areas they need to improve (lighting, audio, set decoration...)
But this was a real treat.

Crack up film! Classic cool guy montage at the start that had me hooked. Well done squad

Okay I'm not the sort of person who's watched many 80s actions movies but this is lots of fun. I love the laugh-out-loud fight sequences and earnest but not too-earnest performances. The gun gags and stilted stunts are brilliant. So much falling down stairs! Such a memorable line about bullets and chains to sum up such a delightful fight sequence. I enjoyed the history of the characters that is revealed in the final scene. The dry performances and entertaining action show this is a team with lots of potential for the future.

This FUCKED!! Big fan! Your team really understood the best tropes of the genre! SO much fun!

Some real great energy from this team! A real crowd pleaser at the heats.

Some of those opening shots look really good and the film starts off promising. There is a decent hard boiled framework here too, the retired guy pulled back for one more job, the old enemy revealing old wounds, and the line about watching you cry blood that day is fantastic - also 'you can't break your chains' would have been up for best delivery of dialogue nom if this was submitted on time.

I get a sense this could be a team that wants to stick around this comp for a while, so with that in mind here are some thoughts that we wouldn't typically go to hard on in school reviews, but I reckon you can take it on board in the spirit intended and really go for it next year with these things in mind. The sound mix is by far the biggest drawback for this one. The wind n the outdoor sections is quite distracting, and then once you are inside there is a long stretch with no music and almost no sound effects, so we sit in silence during an intense moment of the story. The music that does arrive for the fight certainly helped pull us back into it, but probably a little to late.

On the story, the hot dame motivation is period accurate to eighties action so we understand the choice, but it plays differently coming from a school cast and it lands more awkwardly than we think you intended, a great example of the unofficial 48hours rule - 'act your age' - we try to encourage this in school teams so that the story feels well cooked. The other note we had was nobody wants anything by the end, everyone walks away unchanged. That is also probably appropriate for 80s action, but something to consider for future stories.

THE BEST THING: Great use of certain tropes and a great collection of lines and moments that elevate this beyond kids running around with a camera.

THE NEXT THING: Get it in on time! Sound is King! and give your lead something to lose!