Death Toll (2008)

New Orleans has the No. 1 per capital murder rating in the nation. A decade earlier the city was dubbed the "Murder Capital of the Country." Drugs and violence controlled the streets, taking a toll on the city's law enforcement, neighborhoods and its people. Illustrating this dark chapter in the city's history is "Death Toll". If you cut out the annoying DMX flashbacks, the dumb acting and dialogue Death Toll is an OK movie if you like action and any of this actors you might enjoy this film it's no masterpiece and there are a lot of bad things in it but for what it is it was a watchable movie to kill your time. I'm going to give it a 7 out of 10 it wasn't perfect but it was a nice and OK film nothing more.

To say Im a huge DMX fan would be a gross understatement. So when I saw a movie starring my man, that appeared to be more drama than action, I had to buy it. I didn't expect too much, but I also didn't expect a total piece of garbage.Im going to be honest with you here...This is one of the worst films I have ever seen. Not THE worst, but definitely somewhere in the top 10. Im actually kind of surprised everyone involved in this project would allow this thing to hit the shelves. Because in all seriousness, I would be ashamed to be associated with this mess.First of all, DMX and Lou Diamond Phillips have no business being the first credited actors, and no business being on the cover of the DVD. Why? They are hardly even a part of the film. X appears 3 or 4 times for less than a minute each time, and Mr Phillips has about the same amount of face time. This is not good, as the film really could have used more of them to redeem it somewhat.There is no story, it jumps all over the place, there was LITERALLY ZERO character development, and the acting was horrific. It was pretty much 80 minutes of people shooting each other full of holes. Other than that, it was a series of images that add up to nothing.It is not often that I have a tough time finishing a movie. This one nearly got the better of me, but I stuck it out. It really was not to my benefit. I don't really know what else to say. This film is really bad. I honestly cannot say one good thing about it. That's frightening. Do not spend money to watch it, seriously.I really, for the life of me, cant figure out what these people were attempting to accomplish here. Regardless of what that may be, they failed miserably. I don't often hand out 1s, but I am obligated to do so in this instance.

I decided to watch the movie because I was curious about DMX and Lou Diamond Philips. DMX was something like a narrator and Philips was one of the "main parts", but not seen very often on the screen. After the first 20mins I was waiting for the Action, but there was nearly none except a few minutes of shooting scenes during the movie and lots of dead people and blood. I was lucky that the movie has subtitles, so I was able to understand everything. Lots of slang, weird talking and a lot of the F***-word. without these words, the movie would have been 30mins shorter. The movie is more a documentary than an action movie but even as a documentary the movie is still a bit boring and disappointing. If you do have no expectations you won't be disappointed.

Perhaps the best indication of this film's quality lies in the fact that even DMX, who is second-billed, doesn't bother to show up long enough to have any interactions with any of the other characters; instead, he occasionally pops up as a talking head in a dark room, pontificating about life and death. Lou Diamond Phillips, who is first-billed, appears for a total of no more than 10 minutes and cashes probably the easiest paycheck of his life. Although "Death Toll" is billed as an ACTION film on IMDb, there is not even ONE small decent action sequence to be found, just a few (badly directed) shootings. Let me repeat: there is NO ACTION in this "action" movie. It's more of a drama - one, however, where all the characters are stereotypes (from the idealistic mayor - Lou - and the lazy police officers to the career-driven female assistant DA and the vulgar, mindless, illiterate drug pushers), where the dialogue cannot be followed without subtitles (either because of "da hood" lingo or because the constant rap music drowns it out), and where most of the cast is made up by rappers. The only bright spots in this positively dreadful film are the absolutely gorgeous Leila Arcieri and Keshia Knight Pulliam - if they were given more to do, I might have given "Death Toll" more than 0.5 out of 4 stars.