Search - Loaded on DVD

An after school special, but worse...

Coot | hell | 11/14/2008

(1 out of 5 stars)

"Wow. This movie is horrible. Guy goes to strip club meets stripper, smokes pot, and a week later he is addicted to coke, has pretty much dropped out of law school, is cheating on his girl and is pulling guns on people. Yeah. Ok. He does coke 3 times yet he goes through withdrawals in jail. Really?

The chicks are ok, but not enough to save the rest of the movie. If you want to see a guy in a bowling shirt acting like a wanna be gangster then this is your movie. This would fit better as a Lifetime network movie of the week... I bet my Mom would love this movie."

Shooting Blanks

Mark Eremite | Seoul, South Korea | 11/05/2008

(1 out of 5 stars)

"LOADED is a terrible film. Filled with despicable characters who do ludicrous things, all ninety minutes of this clunker fail to inspire anything but boredom and possibly confusion.

The plot follows the young, wealthy, handsome, and over-priviledged Tristan Price (even his name is cool!). Due to a hazy, drug-induced tragedy during his high school years, Tristan has been put under house arrest by his dad. Six years later, during his birthday, he's allowed one night out with his buddies. The party gets a little out of hand, Tristan gets a little caught up in all of the "fun," and his buddies (let's call them Plot Contrivances) disappear for the rest of the movie, while Tristan does all kinds of stupid and illegal things for no apparant reason whatsoever.

LOADED is filled with the kind of jittery and over-exposed shots that you're more likely to find in low-rent music videos. In this case, they are meant to convey Tristan's struggle with the drugs that surround him and the steadily chaotic life that he finds himself living. The movie trumpets a lame duck attitude of Drugs-Are-Cool-And-Also-Dangerous, a paradox that makes the art-wrecked cinematography all the more unbearable.

That's not the least of this film's problems. Aside from Erin Gray, who plays Tristan's mother, the entire cast of this film fails to make any impression beyond pure boredom. Jesse Metcalfe's Tristan is particularly annoying, although that may just be because he's the main character. His slide into delinquency is so easy and so sudden, it makes one wonder if he doesn't have some kind of mental disorder. The story tries to make the father out as some kind of demanding czar, but considering how Tristan immediately turns to drugs and guns the moment he is let out of the house, the father's knee-jerk paranoia doesn't seem so misplaced. As it is, Tristan is only likable inasmuch as you are willing to believe that he is simply a put-upon idiot.

Tristan is swayed by the schmoozy charms of a drug dealer named Sebastian. Played by Corey Large (who also co-wrote the film), Sebastian is smug, distant, and says all of his lines as if he is at the script's first read-through. He's meant to be charming and absorbing, but the only fascinating thing about him is how tiny his face is in comparison to his head. His world of cocaine and bullets is no different than any other low-budget dreck that tries to make killing people exciting, with the possible exception that it is conspicuously devoid of any graphic violence or nudity. Great pains are taken to make it obvious that there's more to Sebastian than meets the eye, but unless the viewer is as stupid as Tristan, there are no surprises to be found here, and certainly no fun.

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