Knock Em Dead Kid
Year: 2009
Director: Christopher L Golon
Stars: Dirk Julian, Michael Resendez, Torry Marks
MPAA Rating: Not Rated
Studio: Golon Films
Running Time: 71 Mins
“Knock Em Dead Kid” focuses on a 19 year old soon to be film student, who desperately wants to leave his Connecticut hometown. But as the days before he leaves progress, he starts to see that his life is spiraling out of control . Soon his problems get worse, when the police are questioning him about an assault, the problems he has with his girlfriend after getting caught with being with another woman and becoming involved in a revenge attack that he should have never got involved in the first place. Sometimes things in life, never go according to plan.
For the most part, I enjoyed Knock Em’ Dead Kid” but there were some things in the film that I didn’t like. First, let me talk about the positives with this film.
One of the things that I liked about this film was that it didn’t look like a homemade film. For a $3,000 film, this film looks professionally done. I liked how, writer/director Christopher L Golon takes his time and making the look of the film not become a distraction, which is the case with some of these ultra low budget films. It adds to the bleakness that’s in the film’s story. Another thing that Golon does very well was the fact that the performances were good. What made the performances work was the fact the Golon get the actor’s delivery down. These characters talked like real teenagers, which buys the fact that these characters are regular teenagers. Not the ones you often see in Hollywood type film.
On the screenplay front, the only positive there was that Golon does a good job keeping the film focused on the film’s central character. At no point during the film, that it went off the central premise on into a different direction.
There are some negatives to this film. Most of it is found in the film’s screenplay. I wished that this film started right off with the incident that the main character was involved. I know that there’s parts of it during the flashback scenes, but I thought it would have been more effective in the beginning. It just doesn’t work with the flow of the film and takes away from the viewing experience. Also, when the film starts, I felt was walking into the middle of the film. I wished, that Golon would’ve began the film with the character introduction or what I just mentioned, instead what appears to be two different guys spewing one liners which didn‘t make sense to me and just didn’t feel relevant with the film. It would have been easier to get right into the story, instead of taking ten minute which it took me to get into this film.
“Knock Em Dead Kid shows a lot of promise on the directorial side, but has a screenplay that lags off at times.
“Knock Em Dead Kid” is available on Amazon On Demand at: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Damazontv&field-keywords=knock+em+dead+kid&x=0&y=0
Review Rating: 2.5 Stars
Saw this on amazon - this guy is right, it don't look like it was made for $3,000 - this director is good, he made this look expensive.