Lowdown Dirty Criminals

Lowdown has elements of Peter Jackson's early movie Bad Taste and left me with a bad taste and disappointment. I guffawed about 3 times at the most. I'm not sure why but it very quickly came across as non funny charicature and two likeable hapless fools. The head crims were well acted but not believable and distasteful. I hated watching the blood and gore of the dissection. When I think about it there were lots of funny little situations and I wanted to laugh with my friends, but nothing was hilarious, as there was an ever present sense of threat. There were lots of moments of hesitation, while the crims failed in their missions and thought about what to do. The Upholster (Rebecca Gibney) was almost glamorous but wooden, despite her many excellent previous roles. I thought the fight scene with the fat guy, and his later removal from the flat funny/weird. I didn't like all the swearing or the motel girl getting beaten etc. I was all cringe worthy. Sorry. Try again and have some more believable likeable characters.

It's obvious why this movie got made: someone saw a bunch of movies by Quentin Tarantino or Guy Richie and thought "I can do that! How hard can it be?" Problem is, it actually IS hard! What makes those movies work is extremely sharp dialog, dialog smart enough that we kinda like something about these criminals, even if they are idiots, amoral, or both. If you don't have that dialog, all you have is a bunch of unpleasant twats doing unpleasant things. No laughter, no engagement. And when you no longer like the characters (and so no longer care if they live or die), even basic mechanical elements like tension and action no longer matter - who cares about the gun fight if, honestly, I'd be happy if some of the main characters were shot?