Andron (2016)

Overrated

Best movie ever!

It's not great by any means, but it's a pretty good movie that didn't leave me filled with regret for investing time in it.

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

As others have pointed out this movie has frequent poor acting, poor direction and little originality - in fact it is really just a composite of The Running Man, Hunger Games and Maze Runner, but is unfortunately not a patch on any of them.I have seen many B grade and Indie movies and this was far from the worst - it did have some cool special effects and some of the fight scenes have reasonable martial art combat, but they are far too frequent and seem to be in there due to a lack of any other action. The music score was also quite well done.Baldwin and Glover certainly didn't add anything to the movie except their names to the credits...in fact I found their acting to be worse than the other less known actors. This deserves more than 1 star - but not by much - I give it a 3 because I did watch it to the end

If you sometimes wonder how some really good actors do some very bad movies: just think about the fact that they need money too. So Alec Baldwin and Danny Glover (still not too old for ... like this) are in this and they may be a sort of remedy to watch for some. Especially Alec is always fun to watch. Even if it's obvious he has no clue why he's moving his hand in front of his face (virtual monitors and stuff that were put in later digitally).Apart from the real actors doing their thing (while looking as confused as the viewer), the rest of the cast is trapped. Literally and metaphorically speaking. The movie has not begun and you stop caring for them. Forget all the twists and turns this throws at you, which will make you dizzy. If your head-shaking didn't bother you and you watch through, either the final twist before the credits or the one shortly after the credits start rolling will finally break your neck ...

Horrible on pretty much every plane. Most annoying, though, was how the plot does not evemn begin to explain itself at all until the movie is almost over. I mean, it could have been halfway decent if they just re arranged the script into a coherent format so we knew what we were watching. It's basically a series of random, pointless scenes until about an hour in, then finally there's an information spewage where one character pretty much reveals the entire plot in one long run-on sentence. From there, things make more sense, but still not enough to redeem the movie.The one thing that DOES redeem the movie is awesome Alex Baldwin doing an awesome evil villain role! He totally made the movie worth watching.

This is what happens when you hire a foreign director who can't speak English and therefore can't communicate with his cast. He was on the DVD extras. Since he didn't understand a word he was filming, how could he make a decent movie or anticipate what the English speaking cast or audience would like? I have not seen hunger games, etc, so I'm not judging this movie by comparison. However, this so-called labyrinth looked like they were filming in an abandoned power plant. I sure hope it wasn't a nuke plant for the sake of the actors. It wouldn't be the first time a director exposed his entire cast to radiation & they ended up with cancer. (Howard Hughes; The Conqueror film with John Wayne, Hayward, Moorehead & 90 others got cancer from filming in the Utah desert downwind near the Nevada nuclear test site). The control room & cooling towers & water systems in this Andron film sure looked like an old nuclear power plant. Oblivion (a movie I loved, was partially filmed in an abandoned power plant in New Orleans. It was not nuclear as far as I know but was leaking water all over the cast, crew & equipment while filming Oblivion. These abandoned power plants are pretty awful. Wet, rusting, dangerous, crumbling, possibly toxic and are rotten locations to use for filming. But they come cheap.I gave Andron 3 stars because I actually loved the few glimpses of the futuristic city. One of the best future cities I've seen. Too bad more of the movie wasn't filmed there using a different plot. Gleaming glass future cities would have been a much better theme.Baldwin & Glover should have reversed their roles. This is not a racial statement. It's a personality observation. Baldwin would have done much better as the asinine Chancellor with Glover as the game Host. It was also in bad taste to show Glover owning a slave. He was clearly uncomfortable.I agree the ridiculously oversized office the size of the French Palace with a single desk & CG screens & controls in the air was indeed absurd. It reminded me of the oversized, empty CG sets on the V 2009 TV reboot series. There should have been more technology & a place for Baldwin's assistant to sit instead of her walking across a football stadium sized room in a rubber suit every time he wanted to have her perform a task. (like ST:Voyager's 7 of 9).There was the total lack of logic behind the plot. 9 Billion killed in a catastrophe caused by this handful of corporations running the world. Using the games as a way to thin out the remaining 2 billion slave population they couldn't feed by encouraging them to bet their lives on which of the 10 contenders would win; & die if they picked a loser.The lack of logic is where they claim they can't feed the 2 billion surviving slaves. They should have the slaves plowing & planting crops & orchards & process fish & food production instead of sitting around, filth encrusted, watching games. 2 billion slave laborers can do a lot to produce food & the privileged few elite would not need to kill off their labor force. These few elite leaders were clearly Not smart. It also made no sense why their slaves were filthy & living in squalor since the gleaming city of glass spread as far as you could see. So plenty of available room & technology for their slave laborers. Also, if they killed off all the slaves, these elite idiots would have to do their own work. Somehow, this population thinning reminds me of the Georgia guide stone. NWOThen we are stuck watching these actors in their young 20's, who have no memories of who & what they are; wandering around this nasty abandoned power plant, doing stupid things & getting picked off; one by one by trick walls & glowing eyed robots. Victims too stupid to stick together or fashion weapons & too stupid to not leave any weapons lying around. The females (except 2) stand there looking stupid while the guys are pounded trying to bare hand fight robots.I wouldn't chastise the acting skills of this cast. They were young actors mostly in their early 20's. Even famous actors often started doing low budget flicks to pay the bills & get experience. Some of the older actors do the same. Remember Clint Eastwood's spaghetti westerns?The problems on this film were a rotten writer and a rotten director who couldn't communicate with his cast. But they all had to praise him in order to get hired by others.The best way to watch this is with your finger on the fast forward button. Go normal speed whenever you see Baldwin, Glover, the future world or the bald black female because she has the entire plot in her dialogue & acting. Also, go to normal speed whenever they are outside. Otherwise, just fast forward. The victims don't know who they are or what they are doing there, so you won't miss much.I usually fast forward through any battles or fights on any movie. There is no value in watching mindless violence no matter how fancy the special effects may be. I have no desire to watch faces punched in. Also, how many laser, sword or gunshots do you have to see? They all look the same. It is boring. I would much rather see sci-fi, high tech & intelligent interaction & fresh new story lines like the film Oblivion with Tom Cruise & Morgan Freeman.As I said, the futuristic city is the best part of this film. Have your fast forward ready for the rest as I described.