Kite 2014 attempts to be a Luc Besson film but fails miserably
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by Blender Dumbass
Aka: J.Y. Amihud. A Jewish by blood, multifaceted artist with experience in film-making, visual effects, programming, game development, music and more. A philosopher at heart. An activist for freedom and privacy. Anti-Paternalist. A user of Libre Software. Speaking at least 3 human languages. The writer and director of the 2023 film "Moria's Race" and the lead developer of it's game sequel "Dani's Race".
South African filmmakers, writer Brian Cox ( who directed some bad films himself ) and a director Ralph Ziman decided to try to adopt what appears to be a hentai ( animated pornography ) film from Japan ( with the same name ) into a cool-ass female-empowerment action flick. They even got Samuel L. Jackson ( an objectively good actor ) involved in the project somehow. Yet almost every decision made in the production of this film was a wrong decision. ↩ Reply
If you ever was interested in film-making, you probably saw a handful of films made by complete, or almost complete amateurs. You never expect from those movies to be any good. And mostly you focus on a few things you know the film-makers might be good at. ↩ Reply
For example, the Ian Hubert YouTube short-films from his Dynamo series. They have cool visuals and impressive CGI, but that is about it. You don't expect Hubert to be a good writer, or the actors in the film to know how to act. Kite reminds me of this kind of movie. Yet, Ian Hubert's Dynamo feels like a better film, in comparison to Kite. ↩ Reply
Hell I'm Not Even Human ( my first attempt at cinematic story-telling ) is a better movie in all aspects. And yet even with Moria's Race under my belt ( which is an Oscar-Worthy masterpiece compared to Kite ) I still can't get fucking Samuel L. Jackson. ↩ Reply
What soothes me a little about the existence of this movie is that this movie got made. And looking on the Wikipedia for a list of similarly terrible films I know now that there are enough stupid producers, who might actually be desperate enough to give me a shot. And yet, it was very depressed of me to put it like this. I know I'm better than the filmmakers of this film. ↩ Reply
Let me illustrate a few examples of why Kite is a piece of shit. Let's start from Cox's script. At some point in the movie, Samuel L. Jackson ( who Cox's script and Ziman's direction tries very hard to turn into a bad actor, with minor success ) says a line that goes like this: ↩ Reply
"I made a mistake, but I spent the rest of my life paying it back. Cleaning up the streets when cops, courts and everybody else was too week to do anything about it. I spent those years trying to bring justice to the man responsible." ↩ Reply
The line is a little too melodramatic. Feels slightly pretentious. The film tries to portray it as this epic speech in the end of the film, which ultimately doesn't work. The delivery of Jackson, in the film is okay. I mean this is the same guy who in Pulp Fiction went all "And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy my brothers". So he knows how to do this kind of, slightly comedic, pretentious shit, sort of work. Yet Cox is not Quentin Tarantino and therefor he is not using this kind of a line as some kind of character quirk. In this movie this line in completely serious. Completely straight forward. ↩ Reply
And yet Cox thinks that it must be his best writing ever. How do I know? Well, a different character calls bullshit on what Jackson just said. And the next line in the script reads like this: ↩ Reply
"Yeah, you right. That shit did sound good though, didn't it?" ↩ Reply
Imagine how bad the rest of the script is, if Cox thinks this line is so good, he can't stop himself from writing his thoughts about the line into the script itself. And yet imagine, this script got green-lit. Jackson read it and agreed to do the movie. I mean come on. It can't be that easy. What the fuck? ↩ Reply
Then there is the sound of the film. The music, made by Paul Hepker is fine. It would work in a film by Nicolas Winding Refn or something. In this movie, with the script and the direction it is kind of stupid. You have to have Refn's sensibilities to make this music work in a film like this. ↩ Reply
But when it comes to sound effects and dialogue mixing and stuff like that. I think it was either done by complete armatures who were stressed beyond belief and given 2 minutes long deadlines, or something. Or the people involved in the sound were just too fucking lazy. The police siren sound effect is just laughable. It is so fucking stupid-sounding. It is this kind of high pitched noise type of thing that maybe sort of resembles a police siren if you really try to connect the dots. ↩ Reply
And then some dramatic tension building in the script involves the sound-effect of the police. Either approaching or getting away. Whoever did the mixing didn't put any Doppler Effect on the sound. It is just kind of getting louder. And then quitter. Maybe. Sometimes the sound just appears out of nowhere and the characters react to it. In one shot they made it go from left to right. What a great surprise. ↩ Reply
The gun shot sound effects are also strange. In one scene the director tries to do this dramatic moment where you are not sure which of the characters shot whom. You see the car ( in which they are fighting ) and there is a loud BAM! from the gunshot. This sound was really weird. It was chosen from some sound library or something. And didn't sound like any of the other sounds from the same gun. There could be probably an attempt to make it sound like it came from within the car. But whatever they did, they didn't do it well. And it just broke the moment. ↩ Reply
India Eisley's main character is, to some extent working, from the perspective of cool shots and stuff. While the script and the sound of the film are complete shit, the cinematography work of Lance Gewer is not. Actually I was kind of interested to see this movie from a somewhat badass looking trailer they put together for it. The film has at times, here and there, actually cool, impressive shots. ↩ Reply
Yet while Eisley's super-model physique and a young teenager baby-face make for a lot of visual goodness, her acting in the film, while she tries her best, is terrible to say the least. Maybe it was the sound guys again, but her line delivery is kind of muted and hard to hear. Sounds like she is constantly scared of asserting her position, or something. ↩ Reply
With the visual qualities of the actress, and the fact that she is trying to do a good job, with a better director, this movie could have been so good. Hell Luc Besson ( a french director, who I will never forgive for dumping Maïwenn for fucking Milla Jovovich, can you believe that ) is almost entirely in the business of making similar kind of movies. His films like Nikita, Leon, Lucy and later Anna are pretty much in the same exact genre as Kite. ↩ Reply
I believe, had Besson actually directed it, instead of Ralph Ziman, we might have gotten a descent, and even maybe good film out of this material. Besson would have rewritten a majority of it himself, to make it work. And his directorial style is pretty much perfect for this kind of movie. I think Besson could have squeezed a very good performance out of Eisley. Yet, we got what we got. ↩ Reply
The movie is strangely horny. Like the director is trying his best to shoot as many up-skirt shots of Eisley as humanly possible. Hell the director even managed to up-skirt Samuel L. Jackson. Yet with all the horniness and sexual subtext the movie never commits to any nudity. While the source material was a fucking porn film. ↩ Reply
Maybe this is why the script is not working? Porn works on the same principal as Horror as I discussed in my review of Knock Knock. And while the movie tries to do gore and has some sequences that in the hands of a better filmmaker ( like Besson ) would have actually worked to make you feel some fear, ultimately it fails in both of those aspects. And then, due to it technically being a cinema picture, trying to get an R rating ( or due to some laws, and the young appearance of the then 19-20 Eisley, that might have made the movie be perceived as a sort of child porn or something, had they went with nudity. She does look much younger than she actually was. And it is implied that she might still be a teenager of about 15-16 or something ) they had to remove all of the sex from this film. ↩ Reply
That lead to a thrill-less thriller. Making the movie kind of actually boring to be honest. ↩ Reply
Besson, would have, on one side either chosen a slightly older looking actress ( or would have presented Eisley to look her age ) and then would have gone fully into sex territory as he did with Anna. Or he would have chosen a much younger actress as he did in Leon with an 11-12 year old at the time Natalie Portman and that would have made the sexual suggestions alone, a sort of thrill in and of itself. In both cases the movie would have worked. ↩ Reply
Callan McAuliffe an Australian actor playing in the movie a sort of boyfriend character to India Eisley's character is not bad of an actor. He is one of the least cringe elements of this movie. If we want to rank the actors in the film, it would be Jackson at the top, because he is actually a good actor, trying to work with a shittiest of scripts. Then there would be McAuliffe. Who is managing to remain kind of cool, while everything in the film is silly and stupid. Then it would the butcher guy played by Zane Meas, who manages to be sort of kind of almost intimidating as a bad guy. And then it would be India Eisley. Because she is at least trying. Everybody after that are just standing there reading their lines. Twice. Because the sound guys probably butchered the sound on set, and had to re-record all of their lines later in a studio. And then those same sound guys mixed it back into the film very badly. ↩ Reply
From the trailer of the film, I thought that maybe the bad ratings it has, has something to do with it's subject matter. I was convinced that it is a kick ass good ass movie, which is basically suffering a sort of cancel culture phenomenon, because it is about a girl that appears to be 15, pretending to be a hooker to kill bad guys. But seeing it for myself and realizing how utterly terrible it is, I finally understand why on Rotten Tomatoes this movie has 0% rating. ↩ Reply
Happy Hacking!!! ↩ Reply
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