Ten Dead Men (2008) Reviews

• BDSM, Homo-Erotica, MMA and lots of Bad Acting

  ryan-12372008-12-17

  I was hoping that "10 Dead Men" was going to be as good as "Rise of the Foot Soldier." The premise/plot is a decent yet typical tale of revenge while the fight choreographing is superb. The acting, dialog, cinematography and editing are horrible (i.e. terrible directing). The small budget excuses the poor cinematography and editing however it doesn't excuse the bad acting, dialog and overall horrible directing. The film seems more a vehicle for sadistic homo-erotica than serious story-telling with lots of violent BDSM, torture, transvestites, and big burly men. As a Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) fan I was offended by the film's portrayal of MMA competitors as brutal, blood-thirsty, mindless goons. The entire film is summed up in one scene halfway though the movie. Two of the main characters are mindlessly watching TV on the couch. The supporting actor channel surfs past an MMA fight to a porn channel which bores and annoys Ryan (the main character). Ryan then takes the remote and returns to watching the MMA fight and is visibly excited by the action. If you're looking for a film featuring homo-erotica, BDSM and MMA to watch with your guy buddies then this is the flick for you. However if you are looking for a good action film like "Rise of the Foot Soldier" look somewhere else. Don't be fooled by a high IMDb rating of this film. I watched it as it had an IMDb rating of 8.1/10 with 156 votes. After watching the film I am very certain that the entire cast and everyone they know voted a 10 for this movie. I rated it a 4/10 as the fight choreographing is superb.

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• Not the worst film....but not far off!!

  david-33542009-11-04

  This is absolute tripe!! Terrible acting by most, if not all of the cast. I watched this for about half an hour thinking it couldn't get any worse....but it did. I only watched it because Terry Stone is in it and I thought Rise of the Footsoldier was excellent. Avoid this film....it is 90 minutes of your life you won't be able to get back. BAD BAD BAD BAD. I do wonder what people think of when they are making garbage like this? Do they honestly think this is a good piece of film making? I would love to hear what the director/producer have to say about it. It makes it into my all time worst 5 films. It is years since I saw something as bad as this. I love this type of film but this one falls way short on so many levels. The acting is rubbish, the sound is rubbish, the directing is rubbish.....and did I mention the acting???

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• Brilliantly Awful

  M_R_G2009-05-10

  Ross Boyask & Phil Hobden have created, in this movie, a work so awful that it is utterly compelling. If you remember the dreadful photo stories from the girly teen comics of the 80's, (so brilliantly parodied in UK adult comic Viz) then imagine a moving picture version with violence, and you will be most of the way toward understanding the feel and presentation of this film. The storyline itself, is a poor version of The Crow, without all the coolness of course, and without the exceptional feeling of empathy for the main character. Where The Crow had dark, brooding, Gothic brilliance, with a classic and memorable score, this movie failed at everything... except at being bad, that is. If revenge story lines were drinks, The Crow would be a fine vintage Champagne, whereas 10 Dead Men would be p*ss flavoured water. Where it fails in the storyline department, it fails equally as spectacularly in the action genre department. The fight scenes are patently contrived and badly executed, and the gore effects brilliantly poor. The acting itself is so appallingly bad, that the viewer is forced to consider the possibility that Boyask abandoned the traditional auditioning route, and instead opted for the less orthodox method of approaching likely looking characters in bars, and asking them if they wanted to be in his movie. Seriously, the acting is so bad, that at times even the walking looks strained and put-on. Doug Bradley's narration seals the deal. It comes across as a badly written afterthought; an addition to the moving picture storyboard. It's almost as if the director realised that the acting talent within the cast pool was utterly incapable of putting the rather tired storyline across, and threw it in as a necessary evil. The movie is however, all the better for it. And therein lies the brilliance in this movie. It is so unintentionally bad, that it compels you to keep watching, right up to the rather predictable and clichéd ending. One needs to look to the deliberately awful genius of Peter Jackson's 1987 movie "Bad Taste" to see this sort of dreadful. Where movies deliberately made this bad miss the mark of awful by the very act of trying to be such, this movie succeeds in spades entirely by accident... It is that which makes this movie worth watching. I would have loved to have given this movie a 10 vote, if for no other reason than the maker's sheer lack of shame for releasing it. In the end, I gave it one star, because awful REALLY IS the best description for it... and that's why you should watch it.

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• cheap but fun

  colinhawksby2009-05-28

  Ten Dead Men is one of 2 low budget films I watched recently.The other was Jack Says.The 2 have quite a bit in common- they start with someone being tortured by gangsters, girlfriend is murdered,revenge etc. Whereas Jack Says tries to be cleverer, 10DM just charges in like a Bull in a China Shop and uses the plot as an excuse to shoehorn some brutal fight scenes into the story. Brendan Carr is the lead..playing a proper psycho he is believable and ( unlike Jack in Jack Says) quite intimidating.All the heavies in this film seem more than capable of damaging someone. We only see his girlfriend briefly but she seems very sweet..just the type to take him out of his criminal life. Production values are rubbish..at times this looks like it was filmed on a mobile phone.There is little dialogue and the story is driven forward by a narrator..Pinhead from Hellraiser.( He must need the money badly). He is the wrong choice to play the voice over of the lead character....he is far too posh. This is not a great film by any means but it is the sort of thing you might enjoy with a few beers

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• Yikes! AVOID!

  rjpurves2010-01-22

  This film is so utterly dreadful that I couldn't finish it. It's obvious that the "actors" were just martial artists plucked from a gym and had no acting ability whatsoever. There's been no story development past whatever gangster films the writer/director and producer decided to use elements of and lastly there's a voice-over ... which made me cringe every time I heard it, and insisted on telegraphing the story. The story is not so much conveyed to us, but dictated to us which is just sloppy. Didactic films are not the way to go here. It's at that point I stopped the DVD and checked out the IMDb. Guys, you proudly proclaim that this is your 40th film together. Did you actually bother learning anything from the previous 39? Things that are essential in film-making such as story, character, frame composition, lighting, sound design, music and directing? It's obvious that while you have the talent (or luck) to get projects off the ground, you've no idea about how to execute a film. In summation, either watch a bunch of really good films and learn to see how they work ... or just stop now and let other people have a go. I really hope this isn't representative of your body of work but i've an odd feeling it is.

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