Battleground (2012)

Powerful

Unshakable, witty and deeply felt, the film will be paying emotional dividends for a long, long time.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

A desperate gang of violent criminals rob a bank . Escaping they lie low in a wooded rural backwaters . Preparing to leave they find themselves being stalked by an unseen foe and fighting for their livesThere's something rather confused about this film at a production level . It does confound expectations and I immediately thought I might be watching a Tarantino wannabe where some desperate criminals falling out amongst themselves then having to pool their resources against a supernatural foe . It does have a RESERVOIR DOGS feel to it for about five minutes then turns in to something along the lines of PREDATOR or SOUTHERN COMFORT . The problem is the plot turn of the villains being hunted down by a deranged Vietnam veteran is played far too soon so any potential surprise or suspense is soon lost . The idea of men being hunted in an unfamiliar hinterland seems to have bored the production team and therefore need to bring in a different element - one of torture porn with a scene stolen from THE DEER HUNTER I don't want to totally condemn the film out of hand . It's a Canadian low budget get feature ( The Canadians accents are noticeable when characters say " About " ) but it's far from the worst film broadcast on The Horror Channel . The technical aspects such as cinematography and editing is more than competent but does show a rather clumsy approach to the storytelling almost as though the production team are very unsure what type of film they're making and has an underdeveloped feel . It's probably summed up by the title of the film which according to some sources is either celled BATTLEGROUND or SKELTON LAKE

Dear Mr. Mckay II.Although it is quite obvious that the movie in mention is not good at all (sorry to say that)...I have one question and one suggestion though.Q: Why didn't you blew up the ambulance after bank robbery when robbers switched cars? It is once classic cliché that you should'v definitely use.S: Please, find something else to do, but don't, I beg you, don't make any more movies.Yours truly Hazy Davey from Sydney

I'm going to keep this very simple. Imagine you have never had a creative idea in your life, so you watch Predator and decide it's so awesome you're going to remake it, except you don't have a monster, a jungle, special effects, actors, soldiers or talent. This is what Battleground is, a poorly hacked together rip off of Predator (with a bit of Hobo with a Shotgun). Scene for scene, line for line, Battleground tries to wear Predator's shoes and what is baffling to me is how so many people involved in the making of this film could have gone along with it. Was this really how the director wanted it? And they actually spent money to make this? Congratualtions, you've made it that much harder for real film makers to get funding.

Battleground starts as six armed thieves make their getaway from a bungled bank robbery in an ambulance, having shot two cop's dead at the crime scene they are in a desperate hurry to get out of the country & Mitch (Bryan Larkin) calls in a favour to get himself & his men flown out of the US but they will have to wait for twelve hours. The gang decide to head into an isolated forest to wait & try to avoid capture but during the night their van mysterious disappears, with over three million dollars & a long way to go they agree to walk & steal a car on the way but they are not alone in the forest as a deranged Vietnam veteran (Hugh Lambe) begins to kill the men one at a time using traps & his own sniper rifle. The gang of thieves quickly realise they are being hunted & must find a way to turn the tables or all end up dead & you can't spend three million dollars if your dead, can you?Originally called Skeleton Lake (which is odd since there's no lake in it much less one called Skeleton lake...) this Canadian production was co-written & directed by Neil Mackay & while it's nothing special it's watchable enough in a routine competent sort of way, I've seen a lot better but then I've also seen a lot worse. What we have here is your typical backwoods survival film where some random character's are chased & killed in some remote forest somewhere, we've seen the setting before, we've seen the group of desperate men on the run after a robbery gone wrong before too & if I'm not very much mistaken we have also seen the deranged Vietnam Veteran who goes psycho before as well. As I said Battleground is nothing new & it's fairly predictable too with the only surprises of any note being how each victim is killed. The killer is given no motivation whatsoever other than he served in Vietnam, none of the character's have any real personality & are merely there to make the numbers up & get killed. At just over 80 minutes long Battleground moves along at a decent pace I suppose & it competent for what it is so as long as you don't expect too much you could do a lot worse than this.Unfortunately too much of Battleground is nothing more than the various character's running around a forest, there are a couple of minor shoot-outs but not much action. While there's not much gore there is one sequence which is quite nasty & almost at odds with the rest of the film, the Vietnam nutter cuts a guy's head off, pokes his eyeball out with a scalpel, proceeds to slice his face & scalp off to leave the fleshless skull before putting the guy's skinned face mask on the table next to the skull. It's a nasty scene which as I said is removed from anything else in the film which is otherwise fairly tame with nothing more than a few gunshot wounds & blood splatter.Shot in Ontario in Canada this is surprisingly well made with no hand-held jerky photography or quick machine gun editing so I have to give it some credit for that at least, are filmmakers finally realising these two annoying techniques are universally disliked? By me anyway. The acting isn't up to much, end of story.Battleground isn't a terrible film it's just that it's not a very good one either, it's a competent horror thriller that you will watch & probably have forgotten about within a couple of days. It could have been better but it could have been so much worse too.