BootDigest
Such a frustrating disappointment
Marva
It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,
Fleur
Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.
Howard Phillips
My comments here focus more on the technical and post-production aspects. The director and author of the film, Frank Kerr worked with my brother Michael Phillips, Tom O'Hanian and myself as we had just launched our post-production facility The Edit House. The was a beta-site for Avid Technologies brand-spanking new, frame-accurate 24fps digital editing system then known as the Avid Film Composer. As I recall the movie originated on Agfa negative stock, was transferred to videotape at (will fill in soon), and we The Edit House took it from there. The complexities of going from one format, film recorded at 24fps, going to interlace video aka 89.94 fields per second, digitizing not just the film rolls, but all the associated metadata (before metadata was "a thing") via FlexFiles; tracking the source audio from 1/4" Nagra (special thanks to John Garrett ;), syncing in the Avid editing system, organizing the several hours on source material so that the editor could be as productive as possible with the new power of random- access, non-destructive editing! We are talking 1996, remember. As editing moved forward, and pick-up scenes were added, the excitement just kept growing at the quality of Frank's film as it moved from organized bins to rough-cut and eventually to final version. We had the opportunity to work with the DigiDesign/Avid AudioVision (thanks Darren Abrams), which we brought to Soundtrack at Finish Post in Boston, where the final sound design and audio re-recording took place. We as post support learned a lot from the experience, as did the 'film engineers' at Avid at the time -there were some painful moments once in a while depending on the laboratory, but all issues were addressed by AVid's crew, by the labs and by The Edit House folks, naturally!
studiointhewoods
i went on a realflix viewing spree recently and watched several independent films recommended by that site. "patriots" was one of those movies.before writing this review, i noticed the previous reviewer's distaste for this picture but, to be honest, i don't share his view. you can certainly tell this movie was shot low budget-- there are no stars i recognized-- but i found the characters believable and the plot compelling.i would caution viewers not to expect Hollywood here... this is an example of film-making on a shoe-string-- with that in mind, i give it a higher mark. still, it would have been nice to see a few more dollars thrown at this one.
rtaylor900
A terrible, awful, amateurish, attempt at making a movie. It has not one redeeming thing in the 80 long minutes it runs for. The acting, the directing, the dreadful storyline, the appalling script. This film should be used in film schools as an example of how not to do it.How does such rubbish get made. I guess that a glance at the credits shows it was made on a very low budget with possibly amateur actors and crew. I read the write up on this board before I watched it and expected better. Unfortunately, while there are many great films that are still unobtainable on DVD there are thousands of real turkeys. This site is normally a reasonable guide to lesser known movies but unfortunately sometimes there is not enough information.
jemenfoutisme
Purportedly based upon a true story, this film depicts the circumstances surrounding the recruitment of a naive young American graduate student by the IRA who want to use her to infiltrate and blow up the headquarters of a Loyalist paramilitary group in Belfast.It turns out however that the recruiter is something other than what he represents (not giving the plot away here), and while the bombing plan succeeds the rest of the story is all about the perfidy and cynicism of all the parties to the Irish "troubles". What I liked about this obviously low-budget melodrama was that it tried to show the dark side of bright and shining 'causes'. What it failed to do however was to rise above cliche in its depiction of the characters involved. I found the portrayal of the IRA as sadistic brutes to be a bit over the top and it failed to address at all the dark side of Loyalism, which, since the 1990's, makes the IRA seem almost moderate. In short the film fails miserably to tell the real story of what is happening in Belfast and instead gives us a stock Perils of Pauline melodrama with the main hero being, yep you guessed it, a Belfast Prod with a Heart of Gold. Political movies work best when they take a stand. Trashing all parties in a conflict in the name of peace is not only limp-wristed, but also a bit dishonest and we never get to hear from the poor woman again because she was taken into the warm embrace of the Bureau of Tobacco and Firearms...I would really like to know how she feels about her experience now.
