I should have known I was in trouble from the opening credits. The graphics are accompanied by some really cheap sounding synthesizer music. It sounds like they sprung for the $39 Casio. Beyond the crappy sound, the melody, if you can call it that, didn’t fit the western I was unfortunately about to see. Let’s keep this simple, shall we? If you pick this baby up at your local video store, I’m going to advise you to put it down and back away from the shelf. Now you owe me. I gave you back 2 hours of your life you we…e about to piss away on one of the worst films ever released in any format. This is extremely low budget nonsense all the way around. The acting is the absolute worst I’ve ever seen. Even George Kennedy is obviously only there for the paycheck, which couldn’t have been that much. George’s life must really suck these days for him to allow himself to be a part of this farce, even if it was only for five minutes. I think he just passed Conrad Brooks on the “do anything for a screen credit and a few nickels” circuit. He fumbles through his scene in a performance I hope he’d rather forget. If you’re looking for corny lines, bad acting, and incredibly poor editing, this is the film for you. Perhaps it should be required viewing at all film schools as an example of how not to make a film. If you just think I’m full of crap, I dare ya to sit through all 118 minutes of this film. I double dog dare ya.
Video
With so many widescreen sets in homes these days why in the world would anyone produce a 2007 film in full frame format? Just another example of how bad this film really is. The video is not even up to most modern camcorder quality. Colors run much like a too often dubbed video tape. The picture often blurs, so detail is pretty much nonexistent. Indoor scenes contain a horrible red tint that obviously was intended to provide an antique sepia look to the picture. Night scenes are merely heavily tinted blue with no effort to hide the bright sunlight reflecting in the scene. One character remarks, “It sure is dark out here,” all the while a blue sly filled with easily seen white clouds surrounds them.
Audio
The Dolby Digital 2.0 track is equally inept. You can hear wind shear on the mic constantly. Crowd cheers in a bar are so distorted you’ll think you blew your speakers for a minute. There is a Dolby Digital 5.1 track which is only louder and no better, but for some strange reason it is not the default setting. The 5.1 option is the second track offered. In this case it really doesn’t matter. I can’t imagine there was any ADR work done in a studio as the entire film is quite noisy.
Special Features
Thank Heaven there’s nothing of value here. I don’t think I could have taken another minute of this crap.
Final Thoughts
Three Bad Men is one very bad film. Maybe we need to have minus numbers on our rate system! It is way too long at just under 2 hours. The director comes from the school that says “if you shoot it, use it” because there are tons of obviously blown takes that were used. In one a character’s false mustache appears to be coming off as he hits the ground. Instead of reshooting the actor, and I use that term loosely, just puts his hand to his mouth to hold it in place as he gets up. If I got to you too late and you paid anything at all for this film, we “got to get your money back”.
