Awaken (2015)

I saw this movie before reading any reviews, and I thought it was very funny. I was very surprised to see the overwhelmingly negative reviews this film received from critics.

This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

The movie runs out of plot and jokes well before the end of a two-hour running time, long for a light comedy.

Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.

The Three Acts:The initial tableaux: Billie wakes up on a beach, battered and covered with sand. Her short term memory is shot, but she remembers to find her dog tags before proceeding inland. She soon joins a chase where one side is armed, and she is among the chased. Erin is separated and killed by Sarge, the leader of the armed uniformed men. Billie escapes with Berto, Chloe, Nick, and Todd, who lead her to Quentin, the de facto leader of the prisoners. Billie swaps kidnapping stories with the others.Rich seems to be the straw boss of the island. He's disappointed with Sarge that Erin is dead. Mao is coming the next day.Delineation of conflicts: The gang of kidnappers/murderers would like to keep the human traffic flowing, since there is a lot of money in organ harvesting. The prisoners would like to escape with their lives. If possible, hurting the efforts of the traffickers would be nice. The gang has weapons, transportation, radios, money, and contacts. The prisoners have their good health, for a while, at least. Billie tries to figure out the connections among them.Resolution: Do the prisoners find a weakness?

Personally I liked the movie. It was an interesting plot, one that has been done before but not enough to make it tired. Unlike others, I thought it was well acted. Natalie Burn is excellent in the very rare roll of a woman who kicks @ss. I think she has the potential to do a lot more action roles, if more people would write lead action roles for women that is.It did drag in spots and the music really didn't help with that but I find that to be true with a pretty much any movie or show set in a forest. All in all, I found it to be an entertaining movie for a lazy day.

This charade starts with strangers waking up on a beach with no recollection of how they arrived and goes rapidly downhill but never recovers. It is a very basic story of bad guys stealing human organs from unwilling donors for the rich.The acting (and I use the term very loosely) is awful throughout.The supposed heroin is a skinny armed woman who would likely struggle to knock over a hat stand let alone out-muscle trained mercenaries twice her size and strength, her leadership is unbelievable over the weakly portrayed men of her little group and her tacky saluting of a dead comrade is the icing on the cake of her over-baked character.The mercenaries are idiots with poor training and absolutely no field craft skills or common sense plus the fight scenes with Vinnie Jones are absolutely terrible and unrealistic.The bad guy is pathetic and weak as he fails to control even the goonish mercenaries whilst his sidekick (the heroin's sister) could have been played by any spoilt, bitch faced teen.The double agent in the field portrayed by Robert Davi, a former bond villain (a massive fall from grace) was predictable and tacky but the so-called "SAS" soldier was an insult to the British Army cadets under 6s group, never mind the real SAS. He was unconvincing, weak and pathetic in all aspects from the uniform (which SAS wouldn't be wearing) to the body language and onto the horrendous dialogue.The crescendo for the bad cast and acting was the introduction of Daryl Hannah as a villainess. She was just, well... awful.One and a half hours of life wasted watching this tripe.

What a bad movie. Bad plot, bad script, bad directing, bad acting, bad editing…just bad. Except for Daryl Hannah. But this movie is one of those movies that is bad, but good. This is one of those movies that can't be taken seriously, yet is interesting enough keep watching. It has all the clichéd moments and plot lines, yet is just far enough away from cliché to be worth watching. There is no nudity, the bathing scene is, in context of other movies of the genre, humorous rather than sexy. There were a couple of moments of Commando, but then Vinnie Jones reappeared on screen and I couldn't take the movie that seriously (and I tend to have a fondness for Vinnie Jones movies for some reason). Overall, this is one of those movies where details are almost completely unimportant, and evidenced by my texting throughout, and not feeling like I missed anything. Of course, as a fan of the Lost series, I did see a few similarities. And like that show, there were a few major story questions that went unanswered. But they did not take away from the overall entertainment. And as previously mentioned, the entertainment was provided by the just-off-cliché moments and plot twists (though one was clichéd). This is one of those movies that could be a hidden b-movie extravaganza. It has the cast, and the heroine, Natalie Burn, appears to be on the rise. If you really have nothing better to watch on a Saturday afternoon, this is the movie. But really, wait until Ms. Burn becomes well known to watch it. (btw - the rating I gave is for execution of apparent intent. Compared to much more serious-intent movies, and this is more of a 3 star.)