You've Got Red On You

So Eshi and I watched a movie a couple weeks back that we didn't end up doing a weekly cinemeh entry. Since we have been trying to keep to a theme we don't always talk about all the movies that we watch, which in this case it was kind of a shame because its a good scapegoat for a major problem in action movies in general. Fake Blood.

Centurion could have been an OK action movie. It was a run of the mill "people on the run from a force that is better prepared to deal with the environment and situation than they are". Its a lot like the movie The Grey (some of the scenes are exactly the fucking same), which also fell into this category. Nothing to write home about. What kept it from being just OK and made it kind of terrible was the fake blood. We have talked about special effects and how practical effects can look far more real than CGI, but CGI also has its place. Both are necessary for realistic looking scenes in big action-y movies. The fake blood in Centurion detracted from the movie. It looked like someone was making a youtube video.

Did you see that shit? It looks like it was added in by someone who had better things to do. Shit, it might have been, I don't know.

This might seem like a dumb thing to be upset about, but it seriously pulled me out of the movie because it was so fake. They spent a lot of time and money making this movie, but this was just lazy. They could have left the blood out and the movie would have been better. I swear, I have seen cracked videos that used the same effects. John Wick, a good dumb action movie, suffered from the same problem. Its a disappointing effect that only hurt the movie, and its sad that it does because action movies are thought of as cheap and dumb by a lot of people, but they have the potential to be good (maybe even great) movies.