More movies from Netflix... This was a sad collection of movies. There are spoilers in this entry, but only for movies that are so bad that spoiling them is probably for the best.

300

By far the best of the group, but it was just kind of ok. It had good action sequences and interesting cinematography. The story was thin and predictable, but I don't think this movie was really supposed to be about the plot. It had valiant fighters, massive death and such.. It's not a bad movie, but I wouldn't seek it out.

War and Shooter

I'm grouping these into one review, because they had the same problem. The ending sucked and was stupid. Both of these movies had pretty good beginnings and middles, but when it came to the end, it just left you thinking, "Um, excuse me? WTF?"

More on the details of each movie...

Shooter

Synopsis: A military sniper is disgruntled because he's used and discarded during some questionable troop actions. He secludes himself in the middle of nowhere. Some govt spooks convince him to use his sniper skills to help them plan a Presidential Assassination. They ostensibly want to prevent one from happening, so they figure if they know how he would do it they will be able to preempt the real sniper. The black hat guys end up assassinating a religious leader next to the President and then offering up the protagonist as the patsy.

It's a good movie, interesting to watch, suspenseful, etc, the problem comes at the end. It seriously feels like the producers wanted to change the ending and they had 3 potential endings to the movie.. and instead of choosing one, they chose all three. We build to the climax, the good guys have evidence of the bad guys wrong doing, the good guys have the bad guys at gun point, and the good guy portion of the government is riding in as we speak to arrest them all.... and they decide to destroy the evidence and let the bad guys go. Then in the very next scene, they attempt to use different evidence to proof the bad guys are bad.... instead of just using the first bit of evidence against the bad guys or shooting them dead when they had the chance. Now that all of that has been done, they decide to just kill them dead. It's so stupid.

War

This whole movie is based on a revenge premise... the hitman kills the protagonist's partner. Protag hunts the hitman down while the hitman is actually taking the mob down from the inside. Turns out the hitman is actually the supposedly dead partner who had plastic surgery done. The hitman had killed his wife and child but he managed to kill the hitman and then take his place to exact his revenge. Fine, it's a stretch, but at least the movie supports it. While the partner-turned-hitman is taking out the head of the mob though, the mobster says that our protagonist partner was a conspirator in the hit that killed the wife and child. Now, this doesn't make any sense whatsoever, the protag has been working to take down the mob the whole time and get revenge for his partner's death. They attempt to explain it saying that the protag was on the take and when he heard that the mob boss was upset with his partner, the protag revealed his partner's home address because he thought they were "just going to rough [him] up a bit."

So, it turns out the protag was an asshole who was a bad cop on the take... and our supposed enemy is a cop who's family was murdered and was sort of the good guy... and none of it was well done. It was just a crappy movie. bleh.