Moviecut—Sparks

...Makes me think that the great Frank Miller needed a bit extra $$$ when he made "the spirit" (JOKE). Because I guarantee this movie was a lot cheaper and way better. I know we are spoiled by marvel as of late but if your a true fan of comic book heroes...your most likely reading this. I just found out I have to talk more and clarify why this is a good flick. If anyone likes this ill wright more on other movies. Ha..how do I review a movie without given away anything. If you see my review...than your intrigued..just watch it and have you mind "EXPLODE" :). Watch it already if your open minded and could stomach The Spirit.

I love comic book super hero movies. I love noir movies. I saw this and thought, "Hey, cool idea." Wrong. Well, it was a cool idea when Alan Moore did it with "The Watchmen." This, however, is no "Watchmen." Not even a bad imitation. This just sucks. Bad lighting. Horrible dialog. Atrocious wardrobe. Bad casting. (Ashley Bell, sweetheart, I LOVED you in "The Day," but darling you DO NOT have the body to wear those clothes. Somebody lied to you.) The action sequences are badly staged. Just plain ridiculous. At least, the first 15 minutes were. That's as far as I got. DO NOT WASTE YOUR TIME. P.S. People that make such shitty movies should be fined and/or restricted from making any more such garbage. There should be consequences for such offenses.

Sparks .... an odd film .... and I understand why many people trashed it ... but I loved it ! It's like watching a 21st Century independent film noir interpretation of mid 20th Century Hollywood grade B or C studio film noir. And they did a good job of it too. If you have any experience watching the old studio police drama's or hero flicks you will understand. All was thought out thoroughly from sets to costumes and accessories (like the hypodermic syringe) even the camera angles. What I liked most was the actors delivery of the script. Somebody did their homework on this style of movie! And there is a distinct message at the end! Just because someone or some organization presents themselves as being an authority doesn't make them good people. We see this in the fundamentalist evangelical Christian minister who murders many and later when the policeman who tricks Sparks into committing a crime!

Not a good movie. Please don't waste your time and money thinking about making a sequel. The film does not match with the comics plot and characters. In my opinion, it was a bad attempt to create an environment close to sin city but they failed on that approach. This is only my opinion but the film is too long and the short action scenes lacks of quality, the FX effects were poor and not convincing. Not even the performers seems to be committed to the script. I believe it was the first time I have ever seen the same sequence of images repeated over and over again. How many times should we see the images of the accident to understand the point?

My god....where do I start. Unlike what a few reviewers have said, this movie is not brilliant, it was not an amazing story, and the acting is certainly NOT good. The acting in this movie, especially from the lead actor, Chase Williamson, was abysmally deplorable. I think that a cat in a large paper bag could have done a better job portraying Ian Sparks. To me, it seemed that he was just cold reading from the script while delivering his lines during filming. Very few of the other actors/actresses were much better. Clancy Brown's performance was, in my opinion, the only real redeeming acting job among the entire cast. Although at the end, even his acting fell short. Beyond the deplorable acting was the film itself. The concept of the movie was what drew me to watch it. The idea of the noir super-hero movie was intriguing, and I truly looked forward to seeing it. Wow, was I in for a surprise. I sat through the film, hoping it would get better, but it just got worse and worse with every scene. It seemed that the writer couldn't decide if the lead character, Ian Sparks, was supposed to be a poor Batman, or a moral Comedian (Watchmen). It also seemed that the concept of the superhero story was being shoehorned into the noir detective story. All in all, this movie was an incredibly bad, low budget, poorly acted steaming pile of horrible. Don't waste your time. DO NOT SEE THIS MOVIE. You have been warned.

I always loved noir movies and I thought that this movie will be good indie movie but sadly, it fails on many levels to create suspenseful story. I will not go into detail, but anybody who has seen a film noir knows what to expect: broken heroes, femmes fatale, murder, revenge and so on. It is a mixture between The Watchmen and Phillip Marlowe, with a city with masked vigilantes (but not so many as we expect), people with superpowers, mass murderers. The story itself is really not that bad, but executed poorly with much predictable storytelling and dialogues. Stuff already seen before, and much better. The actors are not exactly miscasted but it is no big surprise when we discover that Jake Busey and Clancy Brown play bad guys. Fist-fighting is so crappy in the movie, they could really have done much better, and the costumes! No comment! All in all, no wonder there aren't many reviews for this movie, not many people have seen it. Looks almost like a direct-to-video stuff. Watch it if you will, you will not feel too cheated for your spent time.

From reading other reviews on this film, I feel a lot of people have misunderstood the film and are comparing it to the more prominent superhero films. You can't compare it to Superman, Spiderman, Batman, The Avengers, Captain America. It's dark, it's moody and it's very violent. It's a true old classic-style pulp action hero film that should be taken as such. It's similar to Kick Ass, Defendor and all those films with wannabe superheroes that have no powers whatsoever. They're everyday people armed only with self-made costumes and a passion for fighting crime. I really enjoy these dark 'superhero' films and I thought it was a great indie flick. As for Miroslav Houdek's review on this film... you can't rate a film lower than what you actually think it's worth in order to bring the rating down so that it's closer to your actual rating. That's just nonsense, manipulative and extremely unhelpful. How is it that your opinion is more valid than all of the people that have rated the film higher than you? Anyway, go into this film with an open mind and you'll enjoy it for what it is and not for what it isn't.

The previews for "Sparks" looked pretty decent, and the concept was good. My only issue is that I'm a huge fan of "Watchmen", and this would appear to be a pretty good-sized copy of that. While it doesn't have the large scale effects or Hollywood firepower, it's pretty much the same story. Using the term "supers" instead of "masks", the background narration, rough time frame -- just a few takeaways. The acting was more than I would expect from this film. While there aren't any big names in this film, the actors themselves didn't come off as "novice". As well, the film itself didn't look like it was filmed with a WalMart video camera. I would assume that if you're a hardcore graphic novel fan, regardless of quality -- then you could probably handle this. It was a little on the "thin" side for me.

I had the honor of going to a special screening of Sparks, which I had been very excited to see. The film did not disappoint. Not only did it have some amazing actors, but for such a small budget the scenes looked beautiful. It does skip around a little which I didn't exactly like, but other than that it is definitely a film worth seeing. I hope many more people either see or buy this film to support the filmmakers, because they really did put their heart and soul into it. I actually got to meet the writer of the film (and comic) who talked about how everyone worked so hard to get the film done in a short amount of time. Anyway, go see the film. Seriously, it rocks.