source: Chariot

Moviecut—Chariot

Try harder. This film required three more rewrites to whip it into shape. The script they went with was student project stuff. Anybody who knows the rudiments of cinema would know this story needed a lot of work and a lot of tightening up. Music, lighting, acting, pacing, staging and direction was just flat out terrible. The film has a great premise. With a talented director they could have made a cult classic. Unfortunately the movie starts to go into a tailspin in the first five minutes and is unable to pull out of it's plunge earthward. What could have been a tense Twilight Zone episode ends up a direct-to-video embarrassment. As for the ending ... give me a break. This is not how you end any film. Reading the reviews up here has convinced me there are a lot of cast and crew writing them.

Decent enough acting and gains some initial interest in wondering what exactly is going on, but after the big reveal it becomes quite mundane. And you do feel robbed off a proper ending as the movie ends with an endings that are open for interpretation with not much really resolved. For that type of ending to work to movie as a whole have to have been interesting packed of substance through out, but this isn't one of those movies. So yeah overall not terribly impressive, there are far better air-plane thrillers to watch such as NON-STOP, FLIGHTPLAN, SNAKES ON A PLANE and RED EYE for instance, heck even ALTITUDE and PANIC BUTTON was better than this.

Not one of the best films I have seen this year. Not terrible, just no where near the top. This is a decent movie with a unique story that could almost be believable; told really well over all with good effects, and a nice group of actors who all did a great job. I just felt lied to from the start though, and never really bought in, and I think that most people will feel the same. The writer obviously wanted to keep you wondering which thing was the truth until the end, but there is just too much of the man behind the curtain that we are shown just a bit too often for this to feel real. I did Enjoy this movie though due to the great cast, and the effects that I mentioned. No shortage of direction, and over all the production does have a real movie level to it. I recommend this movie to most people, a bit of violence, and very little in the way of language, this is just a thriller, mystery twist that you might like.

I'd recommend this movie Overall I actually thought this was a good movie. There were two actors who I felt spoiled the movie, Anthony Montgomery (Cole), and Brina Palencia(Emily). Montgomery seemed to be thrown into that role, he seemed out of character, and his accent did sit right with me. I think the best actress was Michelle Sherrill followed by Leslie Hippensteel. Whoever wrote this script must love calling women the b-word because it's said throughout the movie in such a context that makes the dialog appear to be coming from the screenwriter which also appears sexist in lieu of it actually developing from within character itself.

"Nobody thought 9/11 could happen either." Sometimes there are such movies that keep me glued to the screen, claim my full attention and are so intriguing that the sense of time is off and I wholeheartedly admit after wards that the movie I just saw was excellent. ˝Charity˝ is one out of that category. A low-budget Indie thriller that only costs a small $ 42,000 (that's actually unbelievable) and was made in mere 12 days. The fact that it all takes place in one location, namely a Boeing 727, probably also ensured that the cost of this film was so low. The biggest drawback is that it surely needs a peerless script since there aren't a lot of action elements (although ˝Non-stop˝ actually proved the contrary) or breathtaking locations. And according to my opinion this script was of a high entertainment level. A level many blockbusters could learn something from. Obviously that's my personal opinion. Seven people wake up in a Boeing 727, not knowing how they ended up there and what's the destination. Together they try to figure out what the purpose is of them being trapped there. After finding a cell phone, because apparently theirs are gone, they discover that the U.S. was massively attacked and cities such as New York, Washington and Houston vanished off the face of the earth. After a while they realize they were destined to be on this flight. Despite the limitation of taking place in one single place the entire movie, namely aboard a Boeing, the director Brad Osborne still managed to keep the suspense. And this because of the sustained pace and the brilliant camera-work. The topic seems unlikely and the story also has some flaws. And yet it's not unthinkable that the U.S. authorities worked out a similar scenario in case such a situation would arise. And now certainly in the aftermath of 9/11. As the team of ˝Chariot˝ formulated it : ˝Chariot paints a cautionary tale of what can happen when the good intentions of the U.S. government are poorly executed.˝ But the things that made it an entertaining movie were the insightful elaborate dialogs, the amusing interactions and the brilliant performances. Michelle Sherrill as Genevieve, contractor for the U.S. government. Brina Palencia who once worked as interim for the White House. And Leslie Hippensteel also got a moment to excel in her role as the alleged housewife. But especially the acting by Anthony ˝Star Trek: Enterprise˝ Montgomery as the seemingly misplaced truck driver Cole was a hit and he was the star of this movie. Forthright and determined he tried to point everything in the right direction. He was alternately straightforward and extremely funny. Cole : ˝You wanna try the cockpit door ? Maybe it'll open up for a woman.˝ Emily : ˝What makes you think it's not a woman flying ?˝ Cole : ˝Well, maybe she likes girls.˝ Even David DeLao as Ra was extremely funny. ˝I look like a terrorist. I know. It's okay. You can stop pretending.˝ It's thanks to the talented and highly motivated cast this was a captivating film. As the film progresses the tension increases. In retrospect, the fact that you are a spectator who's unaware of the real situation is a plus. Everything stays mysterious and you continue to follow the developments cause it stays fascinating. Perhaps the film is abruptly broken off and it makes you wonder how it ended. But ultimately this was the most logical way to end it. I expected such a final but the way all the puzzle pieces fell together was extremely surprising. ˝Chariot˝ is an exciting, entertaining, intense and successful thriller. A film that also appeals to your imagination. It makes you wonder if this could be a true story and what the ultimate result was after the denouement. A successful experiment with a low budget. This proofs again that even with limited resources, wonderful things can be achieved. Highly recommended ! More reviews at http://opinion-as-a-moviefreak.blogspot.com

7 strangers wake up on a plane not knowing how they each got there. All communications on the plane have been cut so no one on the plane can contact anyone on the ground, though someone finds an iPhone and through it they find out that most of America has been destroyed in a nuclear Armageddon. Poor to average acting (and overacting galore), lots of shouting, no real stand out performances by anyone. The characters are all generic cutouts that you've seen a hundred times before, the reluctant hero, the arrogant computer nerd, the powerful government official with a weak personality who crumbles under pressure, they're all here. Visually I liked the way that it was filmed, it looked decent enough. Don't expect any action shots or shots from outside the plane though. The entire movie is set inside the passenger cabin of the plane. Now onto the story, it wasn't bad, it kept me interested, though I am a sucker for anything that is even remotely related to the whole end-of-civilisation genre. The writing wasn't the best, the overall plot was OK but the individual characters actions sometimes made no sense at all. For example (SPOILERS) at one point in the movie there are F16 fighter jets coming to shoot the plane down if they stay on their current heading. Someone asks "how long do you think we have?" to which another person replies "minutes, if that". So does the only person who can fly the plane immediately jump in the cockpit and alter their course? Does anyone show any signs of urgency at all? Of course not. With "minutes, if that" remaining, the only person who can fly the plane then spends the next 5 minutes having heart to heart conversations with the other passengers back in the cheap seats!! If you can get past nonsensical things like that, and there are quite a few of them in the movie, but if you can then the movie isn't so bad. Be warned though, if you don't like cliffhanger endings then you'll hate this movie. I would of given it a 6/10 if it wasn't for what I would consider a very lazy cliffhanger ending.

This is a boring movie that tries to be edgy by being shot in a plane and referencing black ops and military contractors and America under attack to get some street cred. It's a horrible plot vehicle that has been used in other movies ad nauseaum... you wake up not knowing how you got there, with a room full of other people from varied backgrounds try to figure out why they are there... SAW did this idea in an interesting fashion... every movie -after- SAW did it in a boring ripoff fashion and this dog is no exception. There is one set.. it's an airplane interior and the acting is mediocre at best. It leaves a lot to the viewer's imagination because the writer had no imagination. I will concede this movie was made cheaply but I hope copies of it can be burned just as cheaply. PLOT: Wake up on an airplane with 6 other people and don't know how you got there... pointless banal dialogue and no ending was written for this movie. I won't give a spoiler but let's just say you can end this movie at any point and you will have created an ending as satisfying as the director gives you...

I got a chance to watch "Chariot" last night and I enjoyed it and then went to bed. At the time I thought it was an imaginative low budget movie with generally decent performances. Then I woke up and it hit me smack between the eyes just where they had gone utterly wrong. In the movie, seven people wake up on an airplane. They have no idea how they got there. They learn from a mobile phone that they find that the country is under nuclear attack and that they are in the plane as part of a secret operation to preserve a remnant of humanity. They also learn that their destination (Andrews Air Force Base) was destroyed and that they have to get the pilot to divert the plane. Of course the crew is locked in the cockpit and won't answer. One of the seven passengers (Genevieve) is a government employee in the program. She verifies everything about Operation Chariot. Before long, we have one person dead. Genevieve takes the available gun and gets into the cockpit, killing the co-pilot and severely wounding the pilot - who quickly dies from the injuries. One of the passengers is killed by the co-pilot as well. We later learn that the whole thing was an experiment and that Genevieve knew it. She was on the team trying to figure out how to get people to calmly sit through this flight during a nuclear attack and she shot two people to death. That's three counts of homicide, two people she shot and one count of felony murder for the guy who was shot by the co-pilot - all for a fake experiment she knew for a fact was a fake. If she survived, she'd be going away for life in any state of the union and that's a pretty big if because she just shot the pilot and copilot of the plane and nobody left alive can fly it. I do applaud some parts of the movie. A thriller set in just an old airplane was a good idea. No other sets whatsoever. The cast was small but quite good, especially Anthony Montgomery. If you're a Trekkie you'll know the name as the black navigator on Star Trek: Enterprise but he acted so completely different he was almost unrecognizable. Unfortunately that logic hole is so big you could ... fly an airplane through it.