Restitution (2011)

When I tried to see why some people had a lower opinion of the movie than me, some of the reviews complained that the plot made no sense, but I saw fewer plot holes in this movie than I did with Hard Candy, another movie I just saw recently. I'll get into my review first and then cover some comments about other reviewers' complaints.From a story point of view, I thought it was an interesting enough twist. Acting was OK. OK, I'll have to agree with one of the reviewers that perhaps Tom Arnold did shine the best with his typical Tom Arnold type of character (annoying but somehow likable). To me, I would say the biggest complaint I had about the movie is that it had a Made for TV feel to it. Part of it was the script where it was a partial comedy with Tom's character, but a type of crime thriller, too. However, what gave it most the Made for TV feel was the directing/camera handling. I also just saw the movie Colombiana recently, and it's day and night difference between the two movies how to give a movie the "big screen" feel. With this type of directing, it's not surprising that the actors were able to do more than just a passable job.*** SPOILERS BELOW ***To comment on some of the reviews which said that the movie did not make sense, one reviewer complained about the doctor being brutalized in broad daylight. If the viewer had been paying attention, the two thugs were simply "escorting" the doctor, most likely to a boat where they can dump him in the middle of the river. They didn't start roughing him up until they got toward the end of the pier where there was no one else around. Perhaps to give the story line the benefit of the doubt, this is when they needed to "convince" the doctor to get into the boat. However, since Alex came along, they decided to just shoot the doctor right there. Actually, this makes sense since if their objective is to kill the doctor, it would be a lot dumber to not finish the job just because someone caught on to what you were doing. Now, the scene itself was a bit odd because Alex was shooting and it wasn't clear if he was just shooting, not really aiming at them, because he didn't know what else to do... Or in case he was aiming at them, then he didn't seem to care whether he accidentally hit the doctor or not.So this scene could have been better planned, and there were others as well, but to me, it didn't detract from the enjoyment of the movie since I already was in the opinion that this had a Made for TV feel to it.Another reviewer complained that when Alex appeared, people started dying...? I am assuming this is what he meant and not when Brian first appeared. If he meant Brian, then that is one of the reasons they pinpointed the murders on Brian. But if the viewer meant Alex, technically speaking, Alex did not start killing people until the end. It was Tom's character who killed the first guys after Alex's arrival. For the reviewer who complained about the role of an insurance fraud investigator... All we know is that Brian was hired to videotape these people. Perhaps in a real fraud investigation, there are different people who have different roles, one of which is the person who does the videotaping. But anyway, as we find out anyway, he was not hired to do real insurance fraud investigation. This was a down-on-his-luck kind of guy who was taking any job he could get... so he was told to videotape under the pretense of fraud insurance. Since we find out it was not fraud insurance, then there doesn't need to be any connection to reality to what a real fraud investigator does... How is Brian supposed to know?Anyway, so I enjoyed the twist in the movie, and while definitely not one of the better movies out there, I thought it was worthwhile watching on a lazy Sunday afternoon.

Uh?....eh?...what?....This is my fault. I can't stop a movie after a few minutes. So most of this very bad feeling is 'cause of me.And this startling clunker. I've seen bad movies. Movies that make you angry. And this rates up there with them. But you don't do this bad unless you are doing it on purpose for some really strange reason. Mental illness? All that money down the drain. I know actors have to eat like everyone else. But you didn't have to do this.How 'bout a revenge movie where you talk your nemesis into financing your really bad movie and it's this one?I'm forgiving enough to actually admit that Tom Arnold has done some decent acting in the past. But he was bad and probably the best thing in this at the same time.The two bright spots were some decent cinematography and a good final fight scene. That's where I awarded the 2 points. But the pain, oh the pain!An amazingly stupid story where this guy is framed for several murders to cover-up the dealings of the bad guys. He's then tossed in the river alive. (Just shoot him? Oh no!) Then his friend arrives a year later to investigate the situation. Bad scene, bad scene, bad scene. The friend's body was previously discovered. Bad scene, bad scene. Good fight scene. THEN the friend and the framed friend turn out to be the same guy!He apparently survived being dumped in the river and then spent the next year preparing himself to come back and avenge...solve....I don't know. But he left Mena Suvari floatin' the wind for a year? And I have a few more questions.If the "hero's" body was found, who's body was it? Why did he dig up his own grave if he knew it was empty?What exactly were the bad guys doing? Drugs? Did they bother to try and explain? 'cause I'm not going' back in there to find out.Why were all the bad guys doing their bad guy activities in broad daylight with plenty of witnesses around? Was workin' nights overtime?In what reality was it a good idea to let the "hero/lead" actor anywhere near the set (he's also the writer and in another movie he wrote)? Oh dear Matilda he is bad! Being a bad writer wasn't enough. Absolutely he had pictures of the director with a goat to get that part. In a bad movie with bad acting he outstripped all of the other cast. I'm not a good lookin' man but could easily sell the part better than he did. He looked like a bad, over-the-hill comic. There are a lot of things in life that I don't understand. George W was elected twice? Obama and Romney (at this moment) are runnin' neck and neck? And someone read this script and said "okay, let's do it" and wrote a check, too? Now I have to get an industrial strength shredder that will tear through a DVD. (I'm not going to be the one responsible for anybody else ripping 101 minutes out of their life.)

Like another reviewer, I would have rated this movie with a negative number if that were available. Never, never, never again will I watch a movie where the "executive producer," writer and star are the same guy who you never heard of before. This movie is an example of what somebody with too much money and absolutely no acting talent what so ever can do. The professional actors all dealt in a professional manner with the crappy dialog they were given, but Mark Bierlein has no business being involved with show business as an actor or writer. His only other movie, "Street Boss," rated 3.1 on IMDb, was another one where he was the executive producer, writer, and star (what a surprise!)probably because nobody else would risk funding the drivel that he writes.I got the movie because of William Sadler and Mena Suvari, both fine actors, and because C. Thomas Howell and even Tom Arnold are OK to good actors, but I didn't know who Mark Bierlein was. Now that I do, I'll be on the look out to avoid anything involving this guy in ANY capacity.

Reasons to not waste one's time: (1.) This Kiosk rental rating is less than one because it's not worth the dollar it cost to rent. (2.) IMDb rating was 2.3 out of 10. (3.) Most of the actors, writer and director have to their filmography credits either movies no one's ever heard of or lots of TV videos and shorts you've never heard of. (4.) First 20 minutes consisted of some guy driving around and then getting out to then walk around with a cheap camera and take pictures. That's it. (5.) The editing and cinematography were so bad I thought a high school student was practicing on creating a collage for art class. Poor editing, very choppy, no flow and when it did have flow it would barely beat out molasses flowing across a winter Canadian prairie. (6.) Acting, was this artificial, e.g. stare at the person in front of you and read a line then camera pans to that person who reads their line, and back and forth ad nauseam. You would have sworn their was a teleprompter off screen. Also seeing that Tom Arnold was a main character, poor soul, didn't help. (7.) Most parts of the story were just not believable: e.g. recently dug grave doesn't have grass above it that looks like the decades old surrounding grass; some guy is tossed into the ocean feet and hands bound with chains, head in a hood while his captors are above him in a boat yet he still manages to escape from them. Must be those fish gills we didn't see. Then for revenge he spends a year getting in shape, practicing martial arts and pistol range shooting to come back and kill dozen or so highly trained killers. Unfortunately he looked like the same skinny, beer belly non- athletic person that he was before the training. The worst part was seeing an equally middle aged out of shape Tom Arnold act like a Marine sharp shooter and nail three bad kills perfectly from a mile away. For his most remarkable shot he, for some unexplained reason, is in a bumpy rent-a-copter with a very shaky rifle. Just laughable. (8.) Overloaded with uncreative stereotypes such as inept police; crooked police; business that does some drug dealing on the side which supports the mansion of the son who wants to take over dad's business; cute blond girlfriend who works in the local pub; a few innocent people die as appetizers.