10 Cent Pistol (2014)

10 Cent Pistol is street slang for drugs laced with poison. It is also the title of another poor attempt to be a Tarantino type film and hides its flimsy story on a scrambled narrative which just makes the film appear confusing.Two hoodlum brothers along with an aspiring actress get together and raid the mansion belonging to a gangster called Punchy (Joe Mantegna) who absconded with some government bonds and now they target his grown up son, Harris. The film opens with two cops investigating a silent alarm as a nervous Harris opens the door.We then have flashbacks as to how these people got here including violent shootouts, double crosses as well as triple crosses. The film has to rely on heavy narration to make any sense.

This movie starts with a portion of the end story, then leads the viewer through different scenes backward in time. Very well crafted plot lines with an ugly undertone of violence lurking throughout. Good acting and an unexpected climax. While I viewed this film at home, I would not have been at all disappointed to have paid for a theater ticket. A main concept consists of the conflict sex and money, greed and violence bring to friendship. How these factors interplay over time is the core interest that make this story interesting on several levels. Don't worry if you get confused during the film, it will all come together. For a first time director, any director, the composition is slick. Watch closely and you can see how the "kitchen shot" changes from expensive and modern in the future, to old and blue collar earlier in time. Well done!

If there's anything I love more is a Tarantino Wannabe, well some of them. Not Things to do in Denver when you're Dead or Guns, Girls and Gambling. 10 Cent Pistol is one big Kickstarter funded Tarantino Wannabe from the writer of Brooklyn's Finest, which while being I guess an OK movie, (I personally didn't like it much, Wesley Snipes and Vincent D'Onofrio wasted in one movie like that is just disappointing), this is better though. A tight crime movie about a robbery gone bad and the different angles of how it goes bad, the betrayal and the double crosses and even the triple crosses. Containing a lot of cussing and blood soaking shootings that actually looked professionally done without the bad CGI muzzle and whatever effects I found in Michael Madsen's latest opuses sometimes. Rather low budget, but the scope photography makes it look more than it was probably was. It is not boring, which I can say is the best thing about it, yeah, it's a Tarantino wannabe, but it is a short one, that is well acted anyway. Though I am just a sucker for these types of movies, I did like John Cusack and Robert De Niro in The Bag Man, I know, bad me, bad.

I understand this is not a high budget movie by well known producers, but it's still just sub-par.The narrative itself could've been rather interesting, but the movie changes between different events and different viewing angles of these events at least every 10 minutes. Now, this doesn't make the story incomprehensible, but it really doesn't leave much space for actual, progressing plot. It's one of those films where you're told what happens right at the beginning, and the only point of even watching the rest of it is to have the oh-so-unbelievable plot twist to be somewhat understandable. There is only somewhat decent part near the middle of the movie, but it doesn't even play a significant role in the story line.If you like to follow an interesting plot, this movie is not for you; there's nothing to follow. If you like crime-drama-mix-ups, don't. This is all drama with just a bit of gore.