Living & Dying (2007)

This film has an apt title. It starts out with some life and then chokes to death on its own indolent vomit. Writer/director Jon Keeyes sets up an interesting and multi-layered conflict and then, like he blew a brain fuse or something, he fritters away every last ounce of potential as the movie gets dumber and dumber and dumber until it ends in a twist so cretinous I almost suspect Keeyes let his pet hamster write the last 3 pages of the script.The story opens with a quartet of gun-wielding robbers storming into the offices of Duca Enterprises and taking all the money in the office's walk in safe. The cops show up before the robbers can escape and one of them is shot to death while the other three seek refuge in a café across the street. Once inside, though, the three remaining robbers and everyone else are taken hostage by two thugs who are much more violent and much stupider than our initial gang of thieves. The thugs couldn't resist the sight of two duffel bags full of money coming into the café just as they were having lunch. Meanwhile, the local cops on the outside of the café have to deal with the interference of the owner of Duca Enterprises, who comes off like a cross between Boss Hogg from the Dukes of Hazard and the guy with the wings in his hair from the Sopranos, along with an ATF agent who thinks he's living his own personal Quentin Tarantino movie.Now, it might not blow you away, but that's a cute little set up for a crime flick. There are several different dramatic dynamics established that could each go in different directions. For the first 15 to 20 minutes of Living and Dying, I really wanted to see how the story would end up. Unfortunately, where it went was down the rathole of poor plotting, terrible characterization, some remarkably inconsistent acting from Edward Furlong, a couple of inappropriate European accents and a rape scene that seems to be in the movie solely to satisfy the particular predilection of Jon Keeyes.This thing flails about with no idea of what it's doing or who the film is focused on. There's a subplot that's so crudely developed it's practically pre-embryonic, yet still manages to blatantly contradict itself. Michael Madsen looks like he's lost at sea, doing that same Michael Madsen shtick he always does but in an almost plaintive manner, as though he's trying to signal someone to rescue him from this mess. Furlong's performance switches about halfway through from trying reasonably hard to not giving a crap about anything. The hero cop of the film, played by Arnold Vosloo, is entirely emasculated and then offered up again to the audience as though they should take him seriously.Oddly, the best thing about Living and Dying is the acting of Ling Bai. She's best known as a tabloid chick who sort of sustains herself on a level somewhere below Tila Tequila in the pseudo-celebrity ecosystem. Though she's not asked to do a lot here, she's convincing both as a mother driven to crime to get back her daughter and as someone shot in the gut. That is, she's convincing as a gunshot victim until the movie becomes so moronic that it treats her injury like a hangnail.After a promising beginning, this film turns into garbage…and it's a more annoying sort of garbage for having started off decently. Unless you need to buck up your self-image by watching a movie made by someone obviously more feeble-witted than you are…give this one a pass.

I rented this one on DVD without any prior knowledge. I was suspicious seeing Michael Madsen appearing in a movie I have never heard of, but it was a freebie, so why not check it out.Well my guess is that Mr. Blonde would very much like to forget he's ever taken part in such a shame of a film.Apparently, if your script and dialogs are terrible, even good actors cannot save the day. Not to mention the amateur actors that flood this film. Too many non-native-English-speakers play parts of native-English-speakers, reading out lines from a script that should have been thrown away and not having been made into a movie. It's unbelievable how unbelievable all the lines in the movie sound. The music is awful and totally out of place, and the whole thing looks and sounds like a poor school play.I recommend you watch it just so you would appreciate other, better, movies. This is why I gave it a 3 instead of the 1 it deserves.

I am a big fan of Arnold Vosloo. Finally seeing him as the star of a recent movie, not just a bit part, made me happy.Unfortunately I took film appreciation in college and the only thing I can say that I didn't like was that the film was made in an abandoned part of town and there was no background traffic or lookie loos.I have to say that the acting leaves something to be desired, but Arnold is an excellent actor, I have to chalk it up to lousy direction and the supporting cast leaves something to be desired.I love Arnold Vosloo, and he made the film viewable. Otherwise, I would have written it off as another lousy film.I found the rape scene brutal and unnecessary, but the actors that got away at the end were pretty good. But the sound effects of the shoot-out were pretty bad. There are some glitches in the film (continuity) but they are overlookable considering the low-caliber of the film.All in all I enjoyed the film, because Arnold Vosloo was in it.Jackie

when i read other comment,i decided to watch this movie...First, cast specially Michael Madsen and Tamer Karadagli; good enough...Film,very intelligence and interesting because ,cast have a lot of international specially European actor and actress like from Turkey and Russsia...Second,Story is basic and you can guess but if you interesting action good play you'll like in my opinion...Third,Final chapter is not special or interesting,it's regular like other action movies...Reading this description made me realize I would have to be an idiot to waste my time watching this movie.