a5c7b9f00b A group of veterans wake up after a night of partying to find out that the zombie apocalypse has spread across the United States. Together, they must fight their way across the country in order to find a cure for the outbreak and restore freedom before it's too late. After a night of debauchery, five military buddies wake up in the drunk tank only to find out that while they were passed out in their cell, the zombie apocalypse kicked off. Armed only with billy clubs and their military experience, they break out of prison and fight their way to their old base. Along the way, they pick up a whole lot of weapons, a couple of damsels in distress, and accidentally, the cure. They woke up that morning fighting hangovers. Now the fate of the world hangs over their ability to fight. This isn't the worst movie ever. It's a bad movie, but if you're drunk enough it can be an enjoyable-bad movie. But that's kind of the bad thing about Range 15. It's not what it could've been.<br/><br/>When this movie was being made, I followed all of the updates on Ranger UP and Article 15. I'm a vet, I've been in some really twisted things in Iraq, and I was looking forward to what the film-makers said about the upcoming film. A movie by and for veterans, a flick that would get the veteran attitude and outlook right. A comedy-horror film seemed about the best way to go about it.<br/><br/>But this movie wasn't that. It is no way a movie "for veterans." It's a movie for people who love Ranger Up and Article 15 YouTube videos. The characters don't act like cartoon versions of vets or active-duty military, they act like over-exaggerated versions of the already-exaggerated caricatures you see in those videos. I did laugh quite a bit during the flick, but not because it resonated some deep, veteran-aspect of my humor. No, it was just dumb, goofy jokes that came in at random.<br/><br/>What kinda pisses me off about this movie is the fact that it was so heavily marketed as this big deal due to it being by and for veterans. The movie is slapped together. The script is pretty dumb, serving only to get from one joke to the next, and the effects (both practical and digital) are Sega-CD quality. And that would be just fine. It would be just a crappy, Z-grade zombie flick. But it's not that. It's the "first veteran-made" movie. So it basically sets the tone that we veterans can't really be trusted to make anything of actual quality.<br/><br/>And I'm not some film-snob who is out of touch with the veteran world. I'm a vet and a fan of some pretty bad movies. But at least most bad movies are bad earnestly. The film-makers of those films were trying to make something goodÂ… they just screwed up. Range 15, on the other hand, really feels like a cash-grab.<br/><br/>They raised over a million and a half dollars from donations to make this film, and the amount of free stuff (weapons, gear, etc) they got form the sponsors (extremely blatant advertising throughout) makes me wonder where the hell any of the cash went. Maybe it all went to hiring the name-actors that do bit parts throughout. Because it sure as hell didn't go into writing, set design, costuming, or effects.<br/><br/>I can't help but feel that anyone who donated got taken for a ride. The movie just doesn't work. It's a very stock zombie movie, but if someone gave a damn about the project they could elevate that. Instead I felt like I was watching most of the cast just jerk themselves off over how awesome they are (with the exception of Jack Mandaville, who actually gave a legitimately funny performance). It was like they didn't care. They got a bunch of money and cameras, hung out for a couple weeks, threw some credits on the thing and figure it was good enough. No passion, no effort, and roughly zero f***s were given towards making a movie instead of a glorified "look how funny we are" home movie.<br/><br/>I guess at the TL;DR version would read like this:<br/><br/>This movie is bad, but not 1-star bad, and there is some humor in it (seriously, someone tell Jack Mandaville to start auditioning for real movies). It sucks because it so heavily hyped up the veteran aspect that it makes veterans look either incompetent (as in they can't make a movie) or easily-duped (as in they donated to a movie wherein the film-makers just phoned in the production).<br/><br/>Stream it illegally, borrow the DVD from a buddy who paid for it, but don't spend money on it. It's worse than a straight-to-SyFy flick, and those are free. Firstly, I don't really care for rating movies on IMDb I only care for looking at the ratings to determine the "quality" of the movie… to determine whether it's worth watching or not.<br/><br/>8.5/10… That's the worst rating I've ever seen, it's so far from what the actual rating should be and honestly this is one of the biggest false ratings I've seen on IMDb and hence rating this movie 1 out of 10 to make the rating represent what the movie actual is rather than a big lie, but had the rating not been so off I'd given it 3/10 on a generous day.<br/><br/>The movie…<br/><br/>It tries to be comedic, but it fails. I actually can't see how somebody could think that the "funny" acts in this movie would be funny…<br/><br/>I would give myself a medal of honor for enduring this movie.<br/><br/>Let's be honest, even if people had a weird and twisted sense of humor, at best the rating would be 4-5 out of 10, but 8.5 out of 10?<br/><br/>I understand people like to falsely rate movies when the crappy movie has their favorite actors in them and all that but I actually truly don't understand 8.5/10 with over 2k+ ratings…<br/><br/>EDIT: Going through the "reviews" I had to come back and edit my "review"… I don't actually know what to say other than that this pisses me off, crappy movie gets good ratings because of idiots meanwhile really good movies get crappy ratings because of idiots.<br/><br/>I… got… no… words… to… explain… what… this… is…<br/><br/>This was more of a rant than a review but rating a movie for any other reason than rating the movie angers me, that's not what the rating system is for…<br/><br/>EDIT2: Would be nice if IMDb had a mass "block/ignore" option that you can use to ignore future ratings by people who voted a certain movie above 5, that way in the future you wouldn't watch another movie rated 8+/10 that sucks and confuses you for a whole hour and makes you question What The Actual Fu…dge!
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365 weeks ago