ACCELERATION (Michael Merino & Daniel Zirilli, 2019)

[Dida]

First review

0,5 / 5 (ouch)

https://www.austinchronicle.com/events/ ... eleration/

[Jox]

Interview with Natalie Burn:




Photos from Tuesday's premiere at AMC Loews Broadway in Santa Monica:
https://www.facebook.com/pg/Acceleratio ... 4172815031

Below are Michael Merino, Natalie Burn and Daniel Zirilli:




EDIT:
Hollywood Reporter review
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/revie ... on-1253222

Bottom line: You'll feel the Burn.

Natalie Burn plays a getaway driver desperately trying to fulfill a series of dangeous assignments in order to free her kidnapped son in this action thriller also featuring Sean Patrick Flanery and Dolph Lundgren.
You can usually tell when an actor is having a good time. Especially when they're playing villains, which tends to bring out the hamminess in even the most restrained performers. In Acceleration, the new action film directed by Michael Merino and Daniel Zirilli, Sean Patrick Flanery clearly seems to be having a good time, an even better time than when he was starring in George Lucas' The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles on television. Playing Kane, a flamboyant crime boss who lives up to his name by using a walking stick, Flanery chews the scenery with gusto, as if auditioning for the next Quentin Tarantino movie. He's the most enjoyable element in what otherwise proves a flimsy vehicle for its producer/star Natalie Burn.

Burn, who proved her action movie chops in The Expendables 3, plays the central role of getaway driver Rhona, who is first seen engaging in a frenzied shootout. The scene is merely a prelude of what's to come, as the timeline flashes back to eight hours earlier and Rhona delivers the sort of hard-boiled narration that lets us know exactly what we're in for. "In this business, there is no room for mistakes," she portentously informs us.

Set during the course of one very long night, the story involves Rhona's efforts to fulfill a series of dangerous and sometimes lethal assignments given to her by yet another crime boss, Vladik (Dolph Lundgren, going through the not-so-strenuous motions). Vladik, with whom Rhona clearly has a history, has provided ample motivation for his former employee: He's keeping her tween son hostage, refusing to even let her talk to him until she completes her tasks.

During the course of the night, Rhona encounters a variety of very shady characters, many of them quite physically imposing, especially the ones played by former UFC champion Chuck Liddell and mixed martial artist Quinton "Rampage" Jackson. But the most sheerly entertaining villain proves to be Kane, who at one point delivers a rhapsodic, metaphor-laden monologue about the glories of lemon meringue pie. He's the sort of bad guy who is mostly concerned about the mess when one of his hapless victims shoots himself in the head during a forced game of Russian roulette. "Is that blood on my pool table?" he angrily asks his minions.

Other episodes depict Rhona's charged encounters with a variety of unsavory characters. One involves a deceptively friendly criminal (played in uncharacteristically laid-back fashion by genre mainstay Danny Trejo). Another finds Rhona confronting a white slaver (Al Sapienza, oozing sleaze) who, after subduing her, makes sure to have her stripped to her underwear before tying her up. Because this is a film that knows its target audience.

Burn sells her character's lethal expertise in highly effective fashion, displaying a fierce, lithe physicality and an air of supreme confidence while shooting guns in two-handed fashion. The actress, who has a background in ballet, is particularly graceful in her movements, at one point executing a perfect somersault before shooting someone, just because she can. Fortunately, the skintight leather outfit she wears throughout doesn't seem to impede her movements.

It's all very predictable, formulaic stuff, and even the presence of the always eccentrically interesting Sally Kirkland in a minor role doesn't provide much diversion. The action is periodically interrupted by Rhona's frantic phone calls to Vladik inquiring about her son, which only makes you long for the days before cellphones when screen characters actually had to make an effort to place a call.

Acceleration is most effective in its superbly choreographed fight sequences, which Burn pulls off with aplomb — when you can see her, that is, since the action is bathed in the sort of metallic color scheme that mostly seems designed to test visual acuity. Entire scenes take place drenched in colors like blue, red and green, which seems less evocative of noirish visual atmosphere than a malfunction in the processing lab.

[Jox]

Los Angeles Times
https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-a ... ie-reviews





EDIT:
Chuck Liddel interview
https://fanboynation.com/ufc-hall-of-fa ... eleration/



Dolph promo shot





Theatres listing:

[Jox]

[Mosquito]

Interview with Natalie Burn:

I like it, she comes across as a very sympathetic and intelligent person.

I also watched the trailer. Unfortunately it's one of those movies where you can see in every frame that it's cheap. I can never tell what it is but the impression is quite obvious.

[Jox]

Well it is, literally, a low or very low budget film.

But like I also said if the distributor kept the intended cinemascope aspect ratio as it was framed (how can this still deliberately be decided by some folks in 2019 is beyond me), the lack of funds/production value and quickness of the shoot wouldn't be as striking...

[Jox]

Director Michael Merino on Dolph Lundgren and Danny Trejo in ACCELERATION (podcast interview)
https://www.blogtalkradio.com/inside-ac ... celeration

[savagesketch]

Anyone who has a library card has access to TONS of movies, shows, music, and books through Hoopla! Hoopla Digital is like Netflix, but completely free. ACCELERATION is actually one of the newer titles that's available!

https://www.hoopladigital.com

[Scifibuff5]

Well it is, literally, a low or very low budget film.

But like I also said if the distributor kept the intended cinemascope aspect ratio as it was framed (how can this still deliberately be decided by some folks in 2019 is beyond me), the lack of funds/production value and quickness of the shoot wouldn't be as striking...

That explains so much I guess. Cinetel has been releasing countless indie films for markets like HBO and SciFi Channel since the ‘90s so this felt like not only with their Fast & Furious/John Wick inspired styles and poster like a cheap cash grab but not even theatrical quality.

I was looking forward to it but Dolph and co. looked like they did everything in one take or weren’t having fun.

I like Burn but she kept changing her accent and as co-producer I fail to see what appealed to her.

The Chuck Liddell fight was so poorly lit to where you couldn’t see anything.

The Danny Trejo cameo was also uninteresting and didn’t merit putting him on the poster. This wasn’t even worth being DTV by even those standards and while Flannery looked like he had fun, he wasn’t on screen enough or developed enough to make a difference.

[Jox]

Japanese poster:

[Jox]

There still is a bench marquee near the Beverly Hills Center mall that I saw myself.
(I didn't take a picture because a poor homeless woman was sitting on it so I didn't want to be rude)

[Jox]

Now 5.9 IMDB rating for 565 votes (which most appeared suddenly) and 51.7% are 10/10...!
(Of course most Dolph movies don't have 5.9 ratings as of now UNISOL has 6.0 and MOW).

Screen Shot 1.png (39.87 KiB) Viewed 35710 times

Then I found that you can now buy IMDB ratings votes to inmprove your movie ratinsg from different companies offering packages from 30 to 2,300 votes and the rating of your choice...

Screen Shot 2.png (60.9 KiB) Viewed 35710 times

[Moltisanti]

Hmmm, I wonder who involved with the film would be the most motivated to buy rating votes?

[Jox]

I understand that in the context of the current market, releasing any indie/low budget movie is hard and risky, and that a low rating doesn't help, but misleading to push ratings this high is just wrong and dis-servicing the product and their credibility even more (just like the fake raving reviews that are written in such a way that you can't believe they're real).

And then later on you gotta question yourself and aim higher with the "artistic" ambitions of your writing alone.

Both ACCELERATION and HARD NIGHT FALLING have that embarrassing feeling that somebody behind them think that handing a gun to an actor for some gratuitous, stake-less gunplay is "cool" and enough for "action fans", or that "fuck you", other "f" bombs and misogynistic insults like "bitch" is dialogue and that that's where it stops (see HNF particularly) when baddies don't have anything to say. Again I'd like to say that there used to be smart, competent screenwriters in B movies and genre cinema, people whose job was to write...



Blu-ray reviews:

https://www.blu-ray.com/movies/Accelera ... 47/#Review

Video Quality 3.5 of 5

Acceleration is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Cinedigm with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1. Co-directors Michael Merino and Daniel Zirilli and cinematographer Jan-Michael Losada seem to have wanted to recreate a kind of John Wick-esque ambience with this film, and huge swaths of the story are bathed in purples, teals and blues. Since virtually the entire story takes place over one night, that setting plus the grading and lighting choices often keep general detail, let alone fine detail, levels at bay, despite a prevalence of extreme close-ups. There's still adequate sharpness on display, at least in more relatively normally lit scenes, but this presentation often tends to be surface deep at best, with a kind of milky, hazy murkiness in many of the dark shots.



Audio Quality 4.0 of 5

Acceleration features a DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 mix that has some nice panning and rumbly low end in scenes involving cars zooming hither and yon. Some of the action set pieces (Rhona has to take out a series of people to retrieve her son) also feature some well placed discrete channelization of sound effects. Dialogue is rendered cleanly and clearly throughout this problem free track.

https://www.avnirvana.com/threads/accel ... view.6096/

Video: 3.5 stars
Just looking at the digitally shot 1080p Blu-ray you can tell that director Merino and cinematographer Jan-Michael Losada wanted to recreate the visual aesthetics of John Wick, bathing the entire production in huge layers of bright purple, blue and teal coloring. Mix that in with the fact that the movie takes place over night with a limited cinematic budget, the entire thing feels a bit soft and lacking in massive amounts of fine detail. There’s some good close up shots, and some nifty overhead shots of Rhona running around in her souped of car, but there are also quite a few scenes with excessive digital noise and some wavering lines that come into a few severely noisy scenes. Close ups can be exceptionally revealing when they want to, and even some of the faraway shots can as well, but the general inconsistency leaves the image just being “rather good” than exceptional.


Audio: 4 stars

The 5.1 DTS-HD MA mix is perfectly serviceable, with lots of heavy bass running throughout the score, as well as accentuating the action bits. Dialog is always crisp and solidly locked up in the front of the room, while there’s some neat panning effects as Rhona drives around in her souped up car (which I guess is where they got the title Acceleration from). Surrounds are generally active, and the overall ambiance is well done for a DTV flick. Checks off all the proper boxes for a good mix, and doesn’t have any digital anomalies in the track for me to really complain about.


Final Score: 2.5 stars​

Acceleration really doesn’t accelerate out of first girl for most of the movie, and even when it does get a bit fun, it’s mainly due to the supporting characters like Sean Patrick Flanery (who’s actually a hoot to watch as he hams it up as the gimpy mob boss). Natalie Burn is serviceable as a off mother who’s going to do what it takes to get her child back, but the lackluster action choreography really doesn’t help her sell the role of being a bad mama that well (even with the inclusion of quite a few stunt men, MMA fighters and martial artists in general). As a Dolph Lundgren fan I wanted to like this one and would have hoped for one of his better DTV films, but sadly this one is straight to the “skip it” pile for me.

[Tom]

I think with those paid ballot stuffing schemes, IMDB really needs to be looking at the timing of rating surges. Maybe a film has 100 votes and then all of a sudden a huge surge in votes come in a short period, and then the voting returns to 5-10 a day again. That shouldn't be difficult to analyse and look further into. Hopefully they'll identify it and put a stop to it.