"THE SHIFT" WAS NOT AS IMPRESSIVE AS IT'S TRAILER

🎥🎞️Movie Review🎞️🎥 - THE SHIFT [2023] - AppleTV - PG13 - Directed & written by Brock Heasley. Produced by Brock Heasley and Ken Carpenter. Starring Kristoffer Polaha, Neal McDonough, Elizabeth Tabish, Rose Reid and John Billingsley. Budget $6.4 million.

Kevin Garner [Polaha] meets the love of his life, Molly [Tabish], at a bar just after losing his job. He's a recovering alcoholic who stumbles to get back on his feet, even after raising a small family. After having an argument with his wife, he goes to work, loses his job and on his way home he is in a car accident. He awakens to find himself being talked to a man called "The Benefactor" [McDonough], who approaches Garner, telling him that his life has essentially been "adjusted" for the needs of the Benefactors life plan. Garner is tempted at a change in his life, but feels that something is wrong and begins to pray to God for direction, which forces the Benefactor away, and Garner finds himself in a strange world, where everyone is afraid and unable to break away from a city filled with less spiritual people and godlike guidance in their lives. He begins to suspect that The Benefactor may be Satan, straying him away from a honest, spiritual life. He outsmarts the demon to find his way to a new life, a strong marriage, and a family that every man could dream for.

THE GOOD - There's a strong, modest start to the story telling. The plot is pretty strong with some shocking twists and turns. Visual effects are impressive and the sound is pristine. Neal McDonough looked comfortable bringing the character of The Benefactor to life, giving him a mysterious and dubious presentation.

THE BAD - Low Quality 4K cinematography with some very amateur camera tricks and special effects that all look pretty outdated. Poloaha's performance lacked a real life quality essential to make the character of Garner feel realistic enough to make you care. The supporting actors were plenty, but their performances were anything but marginal to effect the outcome of the films plot.

POSTMORTEM - After watching a one minute clip trailer to this film somewhere, I was driven to watch it and hope that the rest of the film delivered a dramatic, paranormal, and exciting product. The entire story fell apart after the plateau of the features most climactic arc, during the first ten minutes of the film. There are wasted efforts trying to present misdirection when the obvious plot line was presented after the initial introduction of The Benefactor. This isn't a good movie. There's very little entertainment and the director certainly fails to deliver a gospel-like message at the end of the fairy tale.

⭐️⭐️💫 [2.5 of 5 Stars] 

REVISITING BRANDON LEE IN 1994's "THE CROW"...

In 1993, the world was introduced to a dark comicbook character based on the writings of James O'Barr, a young artist who lost his beloved fiance to a drunk driver. He brought a lot of pain with him when he produced "The Crow" as a graphic novel and the book began to gain speed in distribution, being loved by fans and everyone accepting it's dark message of revenge from beyond the grave. 

During this time, O'Barr truly had no intentions of taking the graphic novel, selling the rights to a film studio and making a full feature movie. He use his book to heal all of the inner demons that he carried with him, trying to move on from the event that surely would have killed any chance of a real, happy life.

In 1994, things would quickly fall out of control for the emotional, recovering artist. He was able to work with two writers and create a screenplay for a film of his work. This was all by accident and a true testimonial to a good story that was developed well beyond it's time. There were only a few successful superhero films that sold out theaters in the 90s. Batman was one from 1989 and then Batman Returns from 1992 are the most memorable, but surely, O'Barr's Crow movie wouldn't be going up against them, would it?

During this time, Brandon Lee had only been in a small handful of action films. When the news broke that Lee would head the cast of the new CROW film, people thought that this production was just going to be another "chop-sockey" film and have Lee tossing around people using Kung-Fu. But to everyone's surprise, Lee backed out of using any Kung-Fu or karate in the production. He made fast friends with O'Barr and the production was gain top speed to produce something very dark, something paranormal with a touch of true grit.

But the production to the film would crash to a stop, when Lee was fatally injured on the set, being shot in a scene that demanded three re-shoots and close up. Lee too had a fiance at the time and she would witness his death, sharing something with O'Barr, and then the real catastrophe was ignited. After Lee's passing, the executives decided to go ahead and finish the film, since so much of the film had already been completed. "It's what Brandon would have wanted us to do," said so many people from the production.

Watching the film back then in the theater, seeing a man come back to life, literally, and then seeing him die again was a little disturbing. A fact that I carry with me is, that this was some of Lee's best work ever on film. He broke away from the Kung-Fu stereotype and did something totally original, something way ahead of it's time, brokering a production that would set a standard for all action films based on graphic comicbook characters.

I saw The CROW again recently and I was truly impressed by all of the performances by the A-list actors in the film. The action scenes were definitely well choreographed and there was a lot of heart that was put into this film. Could this film have changed the career path for Lee, I'm pretty sure. But it's a shame that The CROW was the highest part of Lee's career and was completely torn away by a simple "one set" production mistake. He is now a legend, who falls under the list of actors like James Dean, River Phoenix, and Heath Ledger, who all died shortly after their biggest performances on screen.

1994's The CROW holds up strongly against most actions being produced today. It's unfortunate that the first film spawned some sequels and even a short series on television, each of which sunk fast in ticket sales and most are all but forgotten. The original movie is a film I can watch over and over, feeling quite content with the storyline and the exceptional work that was done to complete the film with look-alikes and a few CGI tricks. And yeah, I think Brandon Lee would be very proud of the film if he was still alive today. The first film is a classic and there will never be another hit Crow film in today's Hollywood world of bad writing. Long live THE CROW with Lee as the lead actor!