There’s something fishy going on here and I’m not liking it.  So I had this movie ‘Wild Seven’ pushed up to number one in my Netflix cue as the description seemed like something I’d like to see, plus it has Robert Loggia, Shaft and Robert Forrester in it who was in ‘Alligator’, one of the first movies R-rated I ever snuck into and saw all by myself without needing my older brother, Plus ‘Alligator’ had the bonus of Robin Riker getting nekkid.  This was a fairly big deal for a twelve year old back in 1981, and as such Robert Forrester will always have a place as a playa in my heart.  So I get this movie, watch it, and dare I say it is pure garbage.  We’ll get into why later.  I get on the ol’ IMBD to get the cast information and in the comments see all of the glowing user reviews.  Well usually I’m not this disconnected from the populace so I decide to read a few of them and in the forum and a few concerned users point out that all negative comments about this thing are being removed by IMDB admins due to the ‘Wild Seven’ producers paying for an IMDB marketing campaign.  Further into the forums it seems the producers of this film are mighty pissed off and blaming the users who are giving the film bad reviews as ‘Pirates’.  I know that pirating these movies is a HUGE problem, but I didn’t pirate my copy home team and this flick is still garbage.  I sure hope that this post removal thing isn’t true, though there are a lot of administrator deleted posts in the forums concerning this movie, because that would fall under the banner of freedom hating fascism. 

This jumbled mess starts out with a trio of chums preparing to rob a bank.  One of the chums gets into the bank and accidentally fires a warning shot from a shotgun into the back of another chums dome.  Move back to a character named Wilson (Forrester) getting released from pulling two dimes in an Arizona prison and being picked up by bus driver Lee (Richard Roundtree).  Wilson has a plan to rob a bank and needs Lee’s help who used to be a con back in his day but now lives in the glory of the Lord.  Lee doesn’t think this is such a good idea particularly after he meets Wilson’s ex partner Mackey (Loggia) a bigoted man who is responsible for Wilson doing the time in the first place.

Wilson has a son in Buckley (James M. Hausler – who wrote and directed) who has 4 chums he spends most of his quality time with.  His father who he obviously hasn’t seen in twenty or so years brings him in on this mysterious bank job which we are told will yield no loot, and Buckley in turn brings in his chums.  Wilson is using the job as a way to get revenge on Mackey but we aren’t really clear on how this is supposed to take place.  Lee would only do this thing if Wilson can guarantee no one will get hurt, which Wilson does but then doesn’t.  It turns out Wilson only wanted Lee because he has a car.  Which Wilson ends up stealing anyway which he could done with any old car in the first place.  There are other plot points and things go wrong until the sudden, and I do mean sudden ending.

One habit I tend to have, particularly for flicks that are sucking, is I look down at the time on my DVD player to see how much time has passed and try to estimate how much time I have left to suffer.  I NEVER shut a movie off before it’s over.  As the player read 55 minutes, and it appearing that this movie hasn’t even started yet as this whole new set of plot points in being introduced I could only sigh afraid that I have another good hour or so to watch this madness.  Imagine my surprise when a scant twenty minutes later I’m watching credits roll.  Now normally I’m thankful for a short crappy movie but this one had me wondering if they ran out of money or there was some kind of on-set tragedy that brought the production to a screeching halt.  I mean it just ended.  Resolving next to nothing.  Now it could be that I’m just not clever enough to catch and decipher the subtleties and nuances in Mr. Hausler’s jarring and seemingly nonsensical close to his picture or maybe dude just got bored and told everybody to go on home.

But before the cash ran out though we are assaulted with this non-linear story with some fairly lame dialog and suspect acting.  There are the Tarantino-esque discussions about what seems to be about nothing, but in this film are really about nothing.  Shaft and Loggia were decent, but my man Forrester seemed confused as to why he was in this we were confused as to why we were watching him in this.  The worst performances were turned in by the younger crew of actors who weren’t able to convince me for a moment of their authenticity and were unable to deliver their lines with and conviction or infuse any life into their characters.  The film did have some clever moments and Hausler set up some really sweet looking shots and he even was able to generate some real tension in his fractured narrative but ultimately his own script undermined his potentially solid direction. 

Don’t hate freedom guys!  If you have some kind of filter that can decipher which post came from pirates and which post came from legitimate renters or owners (which you don’t) then  by all means, delete those posts.  Otherwise if you care even a little bit about your credibility, let all of the haters post because sometimes, they are on the money.