Echoes of War (2015)

This film keeps you entertained enough to remain waiting, and waiting and waiting. Then, it's over. Not a great product but not too terribly bad either. William Forsythe is the hard-to-like character highlight and the most renowned actor on this film. Not much action but when it does finally come, it may at least surprise you.

Most Westerns show something totally unrealistic. This shows something like it would actually have been.First, everyone is poor. The trapper family have always been poor. Their neighbours were once prosperous cattle ranchers, but their cattle are gone. They are reduced to trapping, but they don't have much skill with it. They trap illegally on the land of the trapper family.The head of the family, whose wife has died, is religious and puts up with it. But his brother-in-law gets offended and feels the need to do something about it.Separately from this, the daughter of the house is seeing one of the sons of the former rancher.All this happens shortly after the Southern defeat in the US Civil War. Both the rancher family and the returned brother-in-law fought for the South. The brother-in-law is haunted by memories - what we'd now call Post-Traumatic Stress.A slow-burning conflict develops from there. Not exactly an action movie, but showing the grim reality that most films ignore. It clearly doesn't please those who expect Westerns to be like live-action video games.

Usually when a film is as bad as Echoes of War is, you can find some bright spots. But in all honesty, there are none in this film. Nada. Zip. Zilch. This film is so boring and poorly done that you have to wonder how smart the poor suckers were who put their money into this thinking they've struck gold. It's not too surprising why the cast was populated with a few B actors and relative unknowns. The performances were weak because the material was weak. The direction looked awkward and unsure. The cinematography was clumsy, the sets and costumes looked dilettante,and the score was out of place.What they did accomplish was they hit the cinematic excrement trifecta: bad script, bad acting, bad directing.

Films don't get a whole lot more boring than this one. They bill it as a western - probably in an attempt to separate fans of the genre from their hard earned money (and time). The reality is this is a poorly written, poorly produced piece of manure that will have you fast asleep before the first 15-20 minutes. If you're unfortunate to still be awake after the first 15-20 minutes, you'll be subjected to the most drawn out, self-indulgent, boring drama that will have you wishing you were doing anything else but watching it. When I saw this, I witnessed audience members shifting in their seats, checking their iPhones, dozing off, anything but able to stay with this for over an hour and a half. It's really that bad. Boring story, boring performances, boring, boring, boring.This will undoubtedly go straight to video where it will fade into the annals of the internet filed under films that nobody saw or gave a darn about.