Division 19 (2017) Reviews

• An honest review

  TheTopDawgCritic2019-04-08

  I had a really hard time staying awake for this mess of a film. The first 1/4 of the film was decent enough to suck you in, but then it was just random dumb camera shots (literally, 5 second scenes jumping all over the place - to no where) and some decent (but useless) Parkour acrobatics. Clearly the concept was taken from many other films, but I didn't care about that. What bothered me was writer/director/producer Suzie Halewood's poor attempt to create a decent story/screenplay. It almost seems like of the 5 hours total of decent filming, it was edited down to random 5-10 second scenes that were repetitive and ended up no where. Major plot issues with lack of any real story, and even worse dialogue. How do two brothers meet again after 10 years, have a one-sided 5 second conversation about nothing, then onto the next scene? Jamie Draven as Harden needed much more dialogue, instead of all these irrelevant scenes on buildings. I get this was a low budget film, and I really enjoyed the low budget effects, but the problem here is the very amateurish writing and terrible screenplay with useless scenes, jumping in and out of nowhere. Halewood's directing behind the camera was not bad, but her editing the film to its final cut was atrocious. A 5th grader could've written a more solid story. Nevertheless, ignore the clearly fake 8-10/10 reviews. This film had a great opportunity that Halewood blew trying to wear all these hats. It's a 4/10 from me, strictly for the decent low budget effects and the acting.

• Big ideas, needs better execution

  BandSAboutMovies2019-04-03

  Sometime in the very near future, prisons have become online portals where paying subscribers vote on what felons eat, watch, wear and who they fight. This is Panopticon TV and it's so successful that it's about to become a franchise. However, the most downloaded felon - pretty much a rock star - has escaped and the authorities want to bring him back in. And they're willing to do anything it takes, even arrest his little brother. Director S.A. Halewood is determined to get the most out of her low budget, but so much of this movie feels like another I've seen before, whether those movies are The Running Man, Gamer or District 9. There's also a moment where someone is smoking and a drone says, "Smoking is not permitted in the street. You have ten seconds..." and I was waiting for it to end with "to comply" to finish this riff on Demolition Man. Nielsen (Alison Doody from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade) leads Panopticon and she's aided and abetted by Premier Lyndon, the COO of Central Control and pretty much the world leader. He's played by Linus Roache who was such a great bad guy in Mandy. Clarke Peters is also pretty decent as a tech guru who removes our hero's double neck implants, showing off his acting chops from Treme and The Wire. They got to battle with hackers and influencers and people spouting all manner of technobabble through the streets of Detroit, which obviously RoboCop will forever be right about, even if so much of it was shot in Pittsburgh. There are some big ideas here. The story may suffer and it may feel like movies that came before, but it certainly looks nice in parts. It's a great start, really. Hopefully, things get better from this crew of filmmakers from here.

• Fake reviews? Watching paint dry would have beeen better...

  johndow-484152019-04-07

  After reading some of the reviews here, I thought I was in for a treat. This turned out to be a huge disappointment, not even sure what the point of this movie was. By the end of it, I had no idea what the hell i was watching anymore. Total waste of 90min.

• Great Idea, Poor Execution

  lennybuttz2019-04-07

  The poster and description of this movie caused me to think I was going to see something exciting. Nothing could be further from the truth. The description of the movie being about citizens watching inmates on TV is accurate it's also really boring. The whole movie is boring, It's like they all took acting lessons from William Shatner, say 1 word, pause for 3 seconds say another word, pause for 5 seconds say a word, stop talking for 5 minutes and look like you're thinking about what to say next then walk away. They had a good story, actually they had a couple of good stories in this show but they chose not to go with them. I had the impression the writers were sitting in a circle in Forman's smoke filled basement coming up with all these great ideas which they forgot about when they came to their senses and they went with something really mundane instead. Science Fiction? I would not call this science fiction it's bare more advanced that what we have today, in fact I think all the technology in the movie is available today it just isn't being used yet, or is it? I liked all the actors, but it was confusing I didn't recognize any of the names but the faces looked familiar. I thought Nash was Ryan Gosling, he looked and sounded just like Ryan. I watched it all the way through hoping for something relevant to happen, TBH I was playing a game on my kindle for most of the movie and just listened to it because it moved so slowly. It looks like a big budget movie but the story wasn't there. The dialogue what there was of it was good there just wasn't enough. Remember when writers used to be able to fill time with dialogue to keep you entertained and intrigued? Today's writers are lazy and just aren't producing enough words and the actors stand around looking brain dead. I can't recommend this movie unless if you're looking for something to play in the background while you sleep, then it's perfect.

• Grungy state controlled dystopia... fight back...

  asnet-349502017-03-07

  I was lucky to catch an early cut of this film at Fantasporto Film Festival 2017 (Critics' Award winner); more a grungy future dystopia than pure fantasy, the film centers around the state's monetization of the penal system while the world around it collapses. A moralistic tale that asks you to work out the morality; opposed to the so too often spoon feeding that we see. This can leave you trying to work out what is going on at times but the film itself is beautiful to look at. Shot in Detroit, London and New York the cities have been blended together like the 1929 film Man with a Movie Camera to create a familiar but non-specific backdrop. Division 19 is an independently produced film but feels like a big budget feature. The story revolves around two brothers, Hardin Jones (Jamie Draven) who languishes in jail while the state has turned his life into a Trumanesque TV show, and younger brother Nash Jones (Will Rothhaar), leader of a band of hacker revolutionaries who plan to bring down the State. The ensuing battle sees the aging State pitted against a brash, youthful movement that wont take any more.