Pluskylang Great Film overall

Plustown A lot of perfectly good film show their cards early, establish a unique premise and let the audience explore a topic at a leisurely pace, without much in terms of surprise. this film is not one of those films.

Sameer Callahan It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

Fleur Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

Tss5078 Four people hold up a bank, but the cops have been tipped off and arrive in seconds. A shoot out ensues and the surviving robbers are forced into a local café, where they take hostages. Two of their hostages turn out to be armed gang bangers, who turn the tables on the bank robbers, making them hostages as well. It was a pretty good opening, but from there it descends into your typical, slow moving, hostage drama, with paranoid cops, scared hostages, and unreasonable demands. Edward Furlong stars in this HBO thriller, and continues to be one of my favorite actors. He is so unappreciated and disrespected in Hollywood, because he was a child actor and will forever be known as that cute kid in Terminator 2. His Co-star is Michael Madsen is by far the worst actor I have ever seen. The guy thinks he's John Wayne, but the second he tries to show any emotion, people start laughing, because he is really that unbelievable. Madsen brings down the credibility of everything he is in, which makes me wonder how this guy continues to get work. Living & Dying has a great opening and an interesting ending, but unfortunately the middle is just about as boring and predictable as a movie can get.

MBunge This film has an apt title. It starts out with some life and then chokes to death on its own indolent vomit. Writer/director Jon Keeyes sets up an interesting and multi-layered conflict and then, like he blew a brain fuse or something, he fritters away every last ounce of potential as the movie gets dumber and dumber and dumber until it ends in a twist so cretinous I almost suspect Keeyes let his pet hamster write the last 3 pages of the script.The story opens with a quartet of gun-wielding robbers storming into the offices of Duca Enterprises and taking all the money in the office's walk in safe. The cops show up before the robbers can escape and one of them is shot to death while the other three seek refuge in a café across the street. Once inside, though, the three remaining robbers and everyone else are taken hostage by two thugs who are much more violent and much stupider than our initial gang of thieves. The thugs couldn't resist the sight of two duffel bags full of money coming into the café just as they were having lunch. Meanwhile, the local cops on the outside of the café have to deal with the interference of the owner of Duca Enterprises, who comes off like a cross between Boss Hogg from the Dukes of Hazard and the guy with the wings in his hair from the Sopranos, along with an ATF agent who thinks he's living his own personal Quentin Tarantino movie.Now, it might not blow you away, but that's a cute little set up for a crime flick. There are several different dramatic dynamics established that could each go in different directions. For the first 15 to 20 minutes of Living and Dying, I really wanted to see how the story would end up. Unfortunately, where it went was down the rathole of poor plotting, terrible characterization, some remarkably inconsistent acting from Edward Furlong, a couple of inappropriate European accents and a rape scene that seems to be in the movie solely to satisfy the particular predilection of Jon Keeyes.This thing flails about with no idea of what it's doing or who the film is focused on. There's a subplot that's so crudely developed it's practically pre-embryonic, yet still manages to blatantly contradict itself. Michael Madsen looks like he's lost at sea, doing that same Michael Madsen shtick he always does but in an almost plaintive manner, as though he's trying to signal someone to rescue him from this mess. Furlong's performance switches about halfway through from trying reasonably hard to not giving a crap about anything. The hero cop of the film, played by Arnold Vosloo, is entirely emasculated and then offered up again to the audience as though they should take him seriously.Oddly, the best thing about Living and Dying is the acting of Ling Bai. She's best known as a tabloid chick who sort of sustains herself on a level somewhere below Tila Tequila in the pseudo-celebrity ecosystem. Though she's not asked to do a lot here, she's convincing both as a mother driven to crime to get back her daughter and as someone shot in the gut. That is, she's convincing as a gunshot victim until the movie becomes so moronic that it treats her injury like a hangnail.After a promising beginning, this film turns into garbage…and it's a more annoying sort of garbage for having started off decently. Unless you need to buck up your self-image by watching a movie made by someone obviously more feeble-witted than you are…give this one a pass.

vhs1999 This movie had an interesting cast, it mat not have had an a list cast but the actors that were in this film did a good job. Im glad we have b grade movies like this one, the story is basic the actors are basic and so is the way they execute it, you don't need a million dollar budget to make a film just a mix of b list ordinary actors and a basic plot. I like the way they had the street to themselves and that there was no one else around and also what i though was interesting is that they didn't close down a café to set there gear and that they did it all from a police station. Arnold vosloo and Michael madsen did a great job at portraying there roles in the hostage situation. This was a great film and i hope to see more like it in the near future.

transient-2 Sometimes a movie is so comprehensively awful it has a destructive effect on your morale. You begin to really ask yourself, what does it mean for our society that the standard is so terribly low? Can they honestly expect that we'll endure this many clichés and still be entertained?Of course, it is still a Hollywood mainstay to make the GUN the major character, plot device, and the source of all conflict and resolution in films. Character needs a gun. Gets a gun. Can't do that because he has a gun. Puts his gun down first. OH MY GOD What are we going to do!? He has a gun! He waves it around, acting more malicious than real human beings ever do. He pushes it in someone's face for 90 minutes, shouting questions. The hallmark of any conclusion will be the comforting sound of police sirens. It's a real challenge to make such a tired, hackneyed formula work again; a film has to be very clever and well executed. This one is neither. It has no life and no personality, and it will suck these components from YOU. it will make you feel WORSE about living in the time and space that you do. Really, who needs that!? So yes, I'll say it: I think this may well be the worst film I have ever seen. Anyone who was involved in the making of this sub- mediocre soul killing trash should be publicly embarrassed for the disservice they've done to us all.