Mob Land (2023) User Reviews

No one talks like the people in this movie

[compmend-60164 · 4/10 · 27 August 2023]

Someone decided to turn on the 'Hillbilly' tropes and keep them going through the whole film. Every line felt like it was a depiction of what someone from California thought that someone who from the South might say, not the way people actually talk. The accents were horrible and the cliche filled caricatures were distracting.

This move would have gotten a higher score from me, maybe a solid 7/10 if not for the dialogue and the poor character portrayals. The cinematography was spot on and atmospheric, the music was good (Not great), and there was an okay plot, though not as fleshed out as I would have liked to have seen.

This movie was one I didn't regret watching once, but I would be hard pressed to sit down and watch it again.

A bitter pill to swallow...

[whitetowel-74786 · 4/10 · 26 August 2023]

Checked this one out because of the 'heavyweight' cast, but sad to report the script and screenplay don't match the talent on show.

A badly aging John Travolta headlines with typical aplomb as a smalltown redneck sheriff, with Matt's bro Kevin Dillon also putting in a decent turn as the film's pivotal catalyst to disaster. However, it's the oft underrated Stephen Dorff who steals the show as a New Orleans mafia enforcer. Dorff is off the hook and carries his weighty bad guy role with typically sinister yet cool-calculated nastiness. He will keep you watching if nothing much else will.

The story itself however is a letdown. It's slow, lacking in tension, originality and continuity, while you really have to shake your head at Travolta's continual failures to connect the dots.

On the plus side there are some decent shootouts, driving scenes and reasonable character development, but the bottomline is this is a rather predictable, low-budget b-movie that fails to ignite, or be quirky/original enough to push it into 'cult' movie territory like an early Cohen Brothers flick for example.

In summation then a one-watch rainy night film at best. Y'all come back now y'hear...

Cookie cutter B-movie

[Silicone54 · 5/10 · 28 August 2023]

Small town aw shucks down on his luck guy gets roped in by his criminal brother for an easy payday. Heist doesn't go according to plan. Things get dicey for the brothers as they robbed an interstate crime outfit. Their uncle who is the town's sheriff played by John Travolta is investigating the incident. Crime outfit sends their fixer man to "settle" the matter of stolen goods and money.

The movie has the pulse of a dying man. John Travolta is the IV drip that keeps this movie alive. That is not saying much about JT but since I am a fan I kept watching through to the end. Stephen Dorff plays the same character as in Old Henry. Its just a costume change for him basically same speech same tone.

I think most people will stick with the movie because they know how it will end. Its just a house fire and yet we can't resist staring.

5 stars for JT's appearance.

No Country lite

[dweston-38669 · 29 August 2023]

More of a character study than a tense, pedestrian thriller that owes a heavy debt to No Country For Old Men in its atmosphere, scope and microscopic detail of small town life.

The change of Stephen Dorff's character to help our protagonist seemed rather too abrupt and underwritten that didn't make much sense and if you've seen the aforementioned 2007 film you certainly wouldn't want to see this.

Nonetheless, it's well acted by the muscular cast , has decent cinematography makes most of its low budget origins and has a sympathetic character in John Travolta.

It won't win prizes for originality for passes for a passable time killer.

Gritty stench

[msoysta · 2/10 · 7 October 2023]

I'm amazed that anyone sees any value in this film. It looks like it was shot in the dark with a dirty lens & not in any artistic way. The dialogue is awful. Nobody has seemed to have had a bath in weeks. I get the dirty white boy down south wife beating wearing stereotype, but it's way overdone & this lead character & his angst is even more contrived. Once again they take a "movie star" name and slap it on a b film with little to no value visually or story wise. Just stupid really. Not a redeeming character to be found. I'm left wondering about some of these reviews and what other movies people have watched that make this seem anything worthwhile.

taut thriller for directorial debut

[ferguson-6 · 7/10 · 4 August 2023]

Greetings again from the darkness. As one who readily admits to watching too many movies each year, I always welcome the unanticipated joy in being pleasantly surprised by one that exceeds expectations. Doing just that is the first feature film from writer-director Nicholas Maggio and co-writer Rob Healy - a neo-noir thriller that takes place in a small rural community down south.

Now you might initially cringe (I did) at the thought of John Travolta carrying a big gun and wearing a cowboy hat as slow-talking Sheriff Bodie Davis in this small town, but I'm happy to report he never overplays his hand and delivers a truly respectable performance. However, despite the poster, his marquee name, and the gravitas he carries, Travolta is not the main focus here. Instead, Shiloh Fernandez plays Shelby Conners, a greasy-haired, drag racing, local truck driver and mechanic who shares a daughter with his town beauty wife, Caroline (Ashley Benson). The family is struggling to make ends meet in this town where drug overdoses barely raise an eyebrow.

Caroline's brother and Shelby's friend, Trey (Kevin Dillon), drags Shelby into a get-rich-quick scheme derived from desperate times. A local clinic is the front for a drug-dealer, which means piles of cash on hand, with not enough security. Shelby reluctantly agrees and, of course, things go sideways. Only it gets much worse when Clayton Minor (Stephen Dorff) shows up and informs the boys that they ripped off the New Orleans mafia, and as the fixer/enforcer, he's there to set things right.

Many times we have seen local boys looking for an easy score. Rarely are the scores easy, and never are they without consequences. Trey doesn't last long, but a strange connection occurs between Shelby and Clayton. Now he's been doing this for a while and he's very good at his job, but Clayton is struck by Shelby's sincerity. Empathy may be a stretch, but he's at least paying attention to the humanity of the situation, despite threatening Shelby's wife and daughter. It does present an unfamiliar dilemma for Clayton, serving as the crux of the story.

As you know, in small movie towns, everyone knows everyone else, so smooth-talking Clayton in his shiny black Caddy stands out like the proverbial sore thumb. Sheriff Brodie is suspicious and cautious and worried about his nephew Shelby, but there's not much he can do to keep up with the gangster. Travolta and Dorff have a couple of nice scenes together, and the film's opening sequences establish the contrast between their characters.

But it's Shelby and Clayton who spend the bulk of the film together. Dorff has most of the best lines, and Fernandez holds his own. Mr. Dorff has always been a personal favorite, and I've often wished he was cast in better movies. Mr. Fernandez was once considered a rising star, and seems to have settled into his acting career just fine (sans spotlight).

Devlin McCluskey sings a terrific and unusual version of "House of the Rising Sun" during the film, and Jason Dodson (the Maldives) plays a wonderful song over the credits, and both songs fit with the look and feel and tone and style of the film ... something that doesn't always happen. There is nothing about the film that gives the impression of 'first time director', so we will sit anxiously awaiting the next one from Nicholas Maggio. In the meantime, hopefully someone will give Stephen Dorff another perfect role.

Opens August 4, 2023.

Awful

[nickjordan-05874 · 2/10 · 17 September 2023]

Shockingly bad.. And I mean bad!!!

Poorly acted, Even the legendary John Travolta couldn't save this pile of garbage.. If Steven Dorf is in it then you pretty much know it's gonna be pants anyway, But you never know.. Lame same old storyline, backed up with some seriously lame acting.. The first few minutes started off ok, I thought hmmm let's give it a chance you never know, then went downhill quicker than a cross country skier.. I know it's a B-Movie but even still you need something to keep your interest.. Only made it to 50 odd minutes before turning it off or slitting my wrists.. Went for the safer option in the end...

You could do a lot worse

[dongillette · 7/10 · 26 August 2023]

Travolta's the headliner, but Stephen Dorff, to my way of thinking, was the lead and most interesting character and did a tremendous job as the heavy.

The story wasn't amazingly original and could even be called cliched, but it was interesting enough to keep me interested for a few hours which is more than I can say for a lot of the post-COVID films I've seen.

Brief synopsis: Travolta's a Sheriff, Kevin Dillon and some dude I've never heard of are thieves who stole from the wrong bunch for the wrong reasons, and Dorff is the mob's "avenger" sent to get revenge on the thieves.

Good acting all around, decent story, and overall entertaining.

Slow, Boring, and Pseudo-Philosophical Doggerel

[leftbanker-1 · 4/10 · 27 August 2023]

First of all, it's too long at 1h57m. Like twenty-seven minutes too long. Cut out the exposition showing what a family man the protagonist is. We don't care. We don't care that the sheriff has cancer, and we don't need to have repeated shots of the protagonist thinking. Don't ever show someone thinking in a film. The movie had tons of violence yet was slow and boring.

Let's move on to things that didn't make sense.

Why would Shelby think they wouldn't kill him? This is a big part of the film so it's an important question. Was he just a total idiot?

In the robbery, we can't see the first guy who was shot, or who shot him.

Then, the guy recognizes the voice of one of the brothers so the brother shoots him with a shotgun at pointblank range...and the guy survives?

They make a lot of hay about race cars, yet the two robbers can get away from two hicks in a pick-up truck?

Travolta playing Tommy Lee Jones's part from No Country for Old Men gets into a gun battle with the two guys in the pick-up. Then they stop shooting. He sees they are both dead. How? Did they have heart attacks?

We go to the two brothers, post-heist, and when we return to Travolta, the truck is on fire? How?

Stephen Dorff in the part of Chigurh form No Country for Old Men. He does the same thing as Chigurh with the coins, but he does it with the waitress and her tip. He has both brothers tied up on their front porch. He kills one then walks away. Why wouldn't he have killed both of them?

Chigurh has the brother follow the doctor, telling him to pull alongside. Brother says he can't, then we see the doctor crawling towards Chigurh. What?

The dialogue never rose about mumbo jumbo, stuff like, "We're all heading the same way." Yawn.

And of course, it ends in a bloodbath.

Mob Land movie review

[trinaboice · 7/10 · 8 August 2023]

IN A NUTSHELL:

A sheriff tries to keep the peace when a desperate family man violently robs an illegal pill mill with his brother-in-law, alerting an enforcer from the New Orleans mafia.

The film was directed and written by Nicholas Maggio with the story written by Rob Healy.

THINGS I LIKED:

The presence of John Travolta in this movie is what will draw most people's attention to it. As always, he does a fantastic job.

The other standout performances are by Stephen Dorff, Kevin Dillon, and Shiloh Fernandez. I just really wanted to see Shiloh get in a shower and shampoo his hair because he was so grungy, dirty, and sweaty during the entire movie.

There sure are a lot of "good 'ole boy" characters. They're all fleshed out really well.

The musical soundtrack is great.

The young actress who plays Shiloh Fernandez's daughter is adorable.

Fun facts: Nicholas Maggio wrote the first draft in four days. They filmed the movie in only eleven days.

The original title for this movie was "American Metal." Which do you like better?

Several people talk about the meaning of life and their purpose in the world.

I loved the shocking, ambiguous ending.

THINGS I DIDN'T LIKE:

The title "Mob Land" made me assume the movie would include the classic New York mobsters.

It's very violent.

TIPS FOR PARENTS:

Kids will be completely bored.

Some profanity, including many F-bombs Bloody violence with a variety of weapons, as well as with hand-to-hand combat A man is addicted to pills.

We see a robbery.

Someone gets a terminal illness.

We see a lot of people get shot and killed brutally.

Borefest

[djpeekay25 · 2/10 · 4 November 2023]

If you suffer from insomnia then this the perfect cure. The storyline is ok, but nothing new. So much pointless and uninteresting dialogue. The writers try to make Stephen Dorffs character interesting by making him asking questions of everyone he meets about what the wanted to be when the grow up and whether they envisaged seeing themselves in their current job. There is nothing clever or interesting about this. At the end Stephen kills Shiloh Fernandez after promising not to kill him if he does everything he asks and then decides to kill the guy who asked to him to kill Shiloh Fernandez. Why he didnt make that decision beforehand. Must have been written by a 12 year old.

I will slap you to sleep and slap you for sleeping.

[Top_Dawg_Critic · 8/10 · 27 August 2023]

I really wasn't expecting to enjoy this indie B-film as much as I did, but thanks to the great casting and excellent performances, this turned out to be an enjoyable little gem. No, it's not perfect, and as much as this type of story has been done many times before, new filmmaker Nicholas Maggio got more things right that overshadowed most of his rookie filmmaking mistakes, and that managed to make this film, his own. In his first ever writing and directorial debut, Maggio created an engaging atmosphere with constant intrigue and suspense, enough to keep me watching and occasionally forgetting to breathe. This film was gritty and thrilling with some sharp dialogue, enough to pay homage to the independent top crime films of the past.

Aside from just a few plot issues, the pacing could've been a little faster and the 111 min runtime could've used at least 10 mins of trimming. The shaky cam at the start was too obvious and annoying, but got better (or I got used to it) as the film progressed. Nevertheless, for a first time filmmaker, Maggio directed his entire cast perfectly, had a decent score and soundtrack (not the usual loud, overbearing and unfitting score that's typical in every B-film), good cinematography, and kept a constant and effective tone and atmosphere throughout the entire film - a feat that even some seasoned filmmakers sometimes can't get right.

This film is certainly no 10/10, but underserving of anything under a 5/10. As an independent B-film, it's a solid watchable and recommended 7/10 from me, plus the extra bonus star that this was put together by a first-time filmmaker - I mean they have to start somewhere, right, and if this is Maggio's first ever film, I'm excited to see what he comes up with next. Mad props to him and all the crew and cast that helped pull and keep this together - you can tell the top actors weren't there just for the paycheck. To see how I rate and review films, click on my username, and you'll also see more of my 1,700+ reviews and 3,000+ ratings.

Crime Doesn't Pay, and It Sure Gets You a Bullet to the Head

[Screen_O_Genic · 7/10 · 26 August 2023]

A Western-style Crime/Drama on breaking the law and its fatal consequences, "Mob Land" is slice of life reality in all its bareness and simplicity. A working class man in the American South is doing the straight path to raise a family and stay afloat. His brother in law in one ungodly moment convinces him to rob a local pharmacy at gunpoint glibtalking how easy it would be as the place is patronized and guarded by mere "tweakers and pushers". Little do they know the ramifications of what would transpire. Starting strong with his directorial debut and a solid script Nicholas Maggio paints a dark and grimy picture of small town American life with good acting from an ace cast led by John Travolta, Stephen Dorff, Kevin Dillon and unknown Shiloh Fernandez who steals every scene he's in. The scenic backdrop of the rural countryside is well displayed providing an impressive and idyllic contrast to the sinister goings-on. Unfortunately the riveting start of the flick slows down to languid mundanity as the film fails to maintain the initial momentum lazily settling for an ending as clichéd as it is boring. Nevertheless this modern Southern Gothic is a fine respite from all the fantasy-ridden churns cranked out by the film industry and is worth the watch for those who want to see the real world depicted on screen.

We're all headed the same direction

[HorrorFilmHellion · 5/10 · 4 October 2023]

A film we have seen a variation of a bunch of times, it really never gets old, if done well. Similar to No Country for Old Men, this time in Georgia and with a cast that mostly drags this out a bit much. Fortunately there are some interesting settings and set pieces that are a bit out of the norm and add a level of realistic grime, such as all the worn out vehicles still on display. There are really no protagonists here to get behind, but I liked Stephen Dorffs character and performance the most. His script was on the nose for the character, and although predictable, seemed the most convincing. Good show, but has some odd plot holes scattered around and then also the camera work was a little too hand-held for my personal taste. Im not big on wobbly/shaky frames, even if because it has to be done on the cheap.

I don't even know why they bothered.

[maximumcool · 3/10 · 11 December 2023]

I read in the trivia that the first draft was written in four days. That kind of explains a lot. I really don't know what the point of this movie was. It didn't say or do anything that hadn't been said and done better before. I think the director watched "No Country for Old Men" too many times and thought he could do something similar. He failed.

It feels like someone grabbed a bunch of words out of a hat and applied them to creating characters. Most of them have these random attributes or minor story points that just go nowhere. The sheriff has cancer. Okay. What does this add to his performance and the movie? Absolutely nothing. The protagonist has Parkinsons apparently. Again, this adds nothing to the story. The whole story and dialogue just wanders all over the place without really doing much. A complete waste of everyone' time, but those who made the film and anyone who watches it.

P. S. John Travolta is on screen for about 15 minutes total while Stephen Dorff is on screen for at least three times as much. They clearly made Travolta the face of it to capitalize on what's left of his reputation and I can only assume he took the paycheck and phoned in his performance.

This is a good ol boy, fast talkin', sweet talkin' film

[thejdrage · 6/10 · 15 December 2023]

First off, I'm not a John Travolta fan, but watched this just for him - and it was worth it. Other reviewers who say he's old and out of shape, well, aren't we all at some point?

This is a good ensemble film. Nothing great, but an interesting watch and get a lot of down home southern homilies - they are a type of religion in the south.

The problem was, that everyone was a philosopher.

There were some surprising performances, quiet, smooth. My favorite was Timothy V. Murphy - who played Sheriff Ben. Not a big part, but he was a great foil for Travolta.

It's not the best film around, but it has good music and it's worth the watch when there's nothing else that tickles your fancy.

Absolute cliche'd garbage

[alanh-03959 · 1/10 · 25 November 2023]

This film is dire , it should be classed as a straight to bin production. The whole storyline is pathetic , it holds no sense of excitement, interest or believability. The characters are cliche'd and predictable it is embarrassing. Every scene seems to start with a close up and the background setting is devoid of content that would indicate any human habitation . The film must have been filmed on a vacant lot with only the actors having access. The first "action" involving the cast is just ridiculous, the robbery was laughable , the chase was stupid and I thought the cars , regardless of the roaring engines, looked as if they were doing 20 miles an hour .Avoid .

Horrible, painful, ugly & tedious.

[rossmcdee1 · 2/10 · 22 December 2023]

There were some good review for this , that like a fool I thought had some validity!

Its a grubby miserable film , where the grubby miserable protagonist says an expletive every other word.

The story is just stupid & horrible - a twist on the same old story of unwitting accomplice who finds himself in deep water - this time with a mob hitman. Nothing is believable - all the actions are some comic book fantasy about how the 'mob' would work.

The colour palette of this film is atrocious- everything is muted & bleak., the cinematography is terrible , the camera never stops shaking - as the the cameraperson had some spasmodic twitching or st Vitus dance.

The acting is decent & sometimes good- for what the actors can do with it, I feel sorry for them- they all seemed talented - including a stoic John Travolta who has some gravitas here as a local lawman.

For about an hour after watching this film a feeling or grubbiness lingered that was hard to dispel.

I doubt I will ever watch another film by the director /writer - if I can help it.

What do these types of film-makers have to say to the public & their audience- what are they trying to convey with these horrible, cliched and depressing tales?

Nothing- it is pure nihilistic ennui.

Mob Land Is (almost) a Good Movie

[FelixisaJerk · 5/10 · 5 August 2023]

I have to give Mob Land a lot of credit. For a Saban film it actually had an advertising campaign, a trailer with a slowed down cover of House of the Rising Sun, a theatrical poster, and even a theatrical release! That's awesome! They're really stepping up their game. When I saw the trailer for Mob Land I figured I'd have to get this from RedBox but I'll be darned, it actually came soon to a theater near me.

And ya know what? It really wasn't a bad movie! Which unfortunately kind of plays to the audiences detriment. It's not bad enough to be fun and not good enough to be fun. It's a middle of the road picture that grasps at some really interesting ideas but doesn't have the finesse to make them work effectively.

For example our lead character is an out of work mechanic with Parkinson's who is at his wits end on how to provide for his family (interesting!), his solution is to rob a local drug dealer with his scumbag uncle (not very interesting). When the big boss hears about the robbery he sends his top head smasher to go recover the stolen loot and deliver the punks responsible. It's been done a lot.

The acting is good, actually. Stephen Dorff and John Travolta give a solid effort and have the charisma and depth to add nuance to their characters. Kevin Dillon plays that moocher, kinda scummy uncle we all have. There are decent performances here. It's the script that squanders their potential to push the movie out of mediocrity.

Mob Land is a movie very much in the same vein as No Country For Old Men, The Place Beyond The Pines, and Hell or High Water. Yes, those films had staggering budgets and a plethora of Grade A talent but most importantly they had wonderful scripts. The difference between Mob Land and those other pictures is that when characters have philosophical conversations about their motives, or meandering questions about their situations, it's interesting. They're building to something. Through misdirection and unconvention these films grip the audience and never let go.

I feel like Mob Land tries hard to be a character study disguised as a crime drama but it doesn't know how to examine itself. It's a vacuum sucking up all this inspiration from wonderful films but it just sits there with the pieces.

Also, Mob Land suffers from some pacing issues, that meandering, philosophical dialogue I mentioned earlier? There is a lot of it here. And we're sitting in cars listening to it, sitting in diners listening to it, sitting in garages listening to it. But philosophy turns to redundancy; it simply never goes anywhere.

Unlike the camera in this movie which goes everywhere! I've coined a new term for how this movie was shot: "Chimp-Cam". 95% of this movie was shot handheld with a stomach-churning shaky cam that is crotch level looking up at the actors. I literally, in my mind, pictured a chimpanzee shooting this movie. And it made it better. 20% of that 95% were tracking shots that were tracking shots just to be tracking shots. Do we need a nauseatingly shaky tracking shot to watch a guy walk from his car to his front door? What's the point?

I don't want to rag on this movie, truly. It's a massive step in the right direction for Saban Films. I feel like they've made an actual film in Mob Land.

If this script could've had one or two more passes that took those longer dialogue exchanges and cut them down to be leaner and more tense...shoot this would be so much better. If they could've given a little more dimension or originality to our lead character's development, hot dang this would be a different review. If they would've hired an actual director of photography and not a half trained chimpanzee...

Slowburning, bleak and mean crime drama, with excellent acting performances!

[imseeg · 8/10 · 8 August 2023]

The good: Stephen Dorff Stephen Dorff Stephen Dorff. This actor just oozes COOL and the older he gets, the more gritty and rugged his coolness becomes him. What a performance of a cool, calm and collected hitman, WITH a really sick and twisted moral conscience...

Any bad? Not really, but beware, this is firstmost a SLOWburning drama and NOT a hardhitting fastpaced gangster movie, although there is lots of mean violence to be witnessed.

But first of all this is a character portrait of some small town folks in dire need of money, who rob from the mob and consequently all hell breaks loose.

I have praised leading man Stephen Dorff's acting performance, but let's not forget an excellent supporting role as a sherrif by John Travolta. And the young small town father's role was really solid as well.

Actor's gem. Director's gem. Bleak, slowburning, yet still captivating crime drama, you wont see often come along. Respect!

Insulting to Small Town Rural Americans and the Viewer's Intelligence

[tomqcollins · 3/10 · 26 August 2023]

I really wanted to like this movie, but it suffers from faults on multiple levels to include how it was marketed and the way it's being reviewed.

First, the reviews. Even negative ones don't seem to understand what noir, neo noir or "rural noir" mean. This is not a "noir" film in any capacity. This might seem like a somewhat trivial complaint, but in fact I sought this flick out because noir is one of my favorite genres. While Mob Land is gritty and bleak, it possesses absolutely none of the elements of (neo, rural, or just regular) noir.

Second, also to the marketing: This movie was marketed well. A nice professional trailer, and even a theatrical opening if what I'm reading is true. On top of that it's currently streaming VOD on Amazon and other sites for more than $15, so clearly some money was spent on the front end of this production. Throw in the pretty decent cast and we aren't likely talking about a super low budget film.

So why, then, if it's set in the present day with new smart phones and pill mills (where unscrupulous doctors prescribe opioids), did they get so cheap in the vehicle budget? We're supposed to believe a sheriff and police chief are driving around in 1980 model Blazers and 1987 Mercury Crown Vics? Even the most rural law enforcement agencies in 2023 have relatively new police vehicles. And what's with the ancient cars our protagonists drive? Like literally a 1984 Buick Grand National, and a late 90s model Honda Civic is the newest car shown more than once in the movie. Only the New Orleans mob boss gets chauffeured around in a late model GMC Denali or Chevy Tahoe. I'm not buying that this was a budget issue given all of the other stuff I've mentioned. No this was laziness and treating the audience like fools expecting those of us who have actually lived in remote-ish rural settings to not know that nobody drives those kinds of cars except as collectors anymore. If the producers, writers and directors really did not have the money to obtain a fleet of contemporary vehicles, they could have adjusted the story back about two decades in time - except then they couldn't use the pill mill plot device.

Boy, sorry I spent so much time on that stuff. Let me move on to the movie itself. The script (dialogue) is awful. Plain dreadful cliché and stereotypes and a total insult to Southern small town rural Americans. Some of the turns of phrase are so ridiculous that I laughed out loud. "I'll slap ya so hard ya go to sleep and then slap ya for sleepin'..." "Well, taaaaarnation, I'll be a monkey's uncle...." Throwaway BS lines like that, which would be more at home in a Yosemite Sam cartoon or 4th grade level adventure book. It wouldn't surprise me if Travolta and Dorff were improvising if not for the fact that this wasn't an experienced writing/directing team behind them. But it wasn't just the more overt abuse of dialogue that ruined it for me; 90% of ALL dialogue in Mob Land is just as contrived, cliché and hyper sappy. IOW, just NOT believable AT ALL. Not even in a tongue in cheek joking manner if that was what the writers had intended. Just dumb.

And Dorff took it to a whole other level with his one dimensional, unbelievable, ultra-nihilist hit man character who I found myself wondering what this type of man would even live for? He didn't even get sadistic pleasure from hurting (actually almost always killing) people and he goes on at length multiple times about how meaningless life is; this when he's not condescendingly and completely unbelievably berating towns folk like the waitress or gas station clerk about how pathetic they are for even existing, which he always starts by asking them "Is THIS what you wanted to be when you grew up?" in a super annoying tone of voice. LOL, whoever wrote this needs to look into a different career, but I'm quite shocked that Travolta and Dorff (whose characters are by far the worst offenders, although the other sheriff comes close) didn't question the director and push back against some of this cringeworthy completely unbelievable dialogue. I seriously doubt most A-listers would look at this script and not either laugh or mark it up with brand new dialogue. LOL

Then we have the plot, which has so many holes that the movie could have been called Southern Swiss Cheese. I won't even get into them because I don't want to provide any spoilers; just know going in that you're going to be expected to suspend disbelief and accept some really illogical, contradictory and contrived story elements. Flat out - once you get past the relatively good cinematography (other than the shaky chimpanzee cam - I term I saw in another review and agree with totally) - there's absolutely nothing here that hasn't been done before, but better, more believably, and without condescending to its subject matter with tired, often bigoted tropes. Ironically this one was clearly made for the types of critics that give arthouse films high marks, but looking at the reviews it's getting, that backfired. So they better hope there's a bunch of people out there willing to shell out $19.99 to watch it on VOD, because if you've followed this review along this far, I urge you NOT TO DO.

Comical amateurish filmmaking

[The_Romantic · 1/10 · 26 August 2023]

The filmmakers could have got better results from a teenager using their iPhone. The lighting is wrong, the white balance is wrong, the colour saturation is wrong. Who decided that it would be a good idea to have the camera bouncing around throughout the movie? It is an idiotic idea. Put the camera on a tripod! Better still, they invented something called the Steadicam about 50 years ago. Could they not have borrowed one of these from someone?

It is as if they tried to make the movie as unappealing as possible, and as difficult to watch as possible. The awful ighting, childish camerawork, and over-used colour filters are a constant distraction for the viewer. Fortunately, there was little, in the way of substance or quality, to be distracted from.

This is everything that is wrong in Hollywood these days. In a desperate attempt to stand out, filmmakers will resort to the most absurd gimmicks, because they don't have the basic ingredients required for a successful movie: A good story, intriguing characters and a powerful script.

Don't waste your time on this one!

Merely average, with poor cinematography

[latinfineart · 5/10 · 7 September 2023]

The highlight of this film was Stephen Dorff, who just seems to be getting better and better. He's always been good, but the work he's been doing the last few years is very good. Travolta was decent. The direction of this film was mediocre, and the thing that really killed the film for me was the cinematography, the jittery handheld Gen Z camera movements were just horrible, and reeked of low budget. They totally took me out of every scene rather than draw me in. Any scene that had any kind of action in it was handheld and it was just horrible. That is a trend that I hope is going to pass because it is not a positive development for cinematography.

This movie did have some potential but it somehow felt squandered, and in the end it was not very satisfying, with the exception of Dorff's performance.

Nothing here.

[bombersflyup · 2/10 · 29 August 2023]

Mob Land is a lacklustre and uninspiring film, with a generic premise and sloppy execution.

The protagonist's coerced into stealing from some place, just because. When robbing the place, Trey shoots the guy because his voice's recognized, yet doesn't make sure he's dead, so that he can let it be known who did it... That's just poor writing right there, leaving little development to take place beyond this. The characters and performances are pretty much non-existent, with the dialogue as dull as dishwater. Dorff's presence is felt somewhat, but the film just contains no grit given the subject matter.

Terrible

[chogan9 · 5/10 · 10 August 2023]

This movie looks like it was shot well, and that is a good thing because you have to watch awful dialogue being delivered for almost two hours. The plot wanders aimlessly through a small town "deep in the heart of Dixie", which the movie makes out to be rural Alabama but it was shot in Winder, Georgia. This fact produced the best part of the movie when my cousin who I was watching it with not only recognized the restaurant from multiple scenes but he had visited the restaurant during the filming and thus the chalkboards usually filled with restaurant information were wiped, not clean but illegible. Which kind of sums up the movie, they care enough to erase the writing but not enough to dress it with new writing. It's good to see John Travolta and Stephen Dorff getting work because either one is capable of firing off a sleeper winner, like Killing Season, but this one seemed just like a job for a check. Do not waste your time.