Echoes of War (2015)

Nice effects though.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

Worth seeing just to witness how winsome it is.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

If you are expecting a shoot 'em up western, look elsewhere. If you're looking for a film that examines the aftermath of the Civil War in somewhat brutal terms and offers a "that was then, this is now," perspective to the average, impoverished white Confederate soldier coming home from the war, this is your film. Editing could have been tighter while keeping the pensive tone. There's some elements of metaphor that should have gone just a little deeper with another draft on the script (who perishes, who survives & manner of disposal). It seems that most apt films about the South are made by foreign directors, starting with Renoir's The Southerner. The Aussie director gets a lot of things right, and for that, I will indulge some of the dialogue and pacing issues. Ethan Embry disappeared into his role, and the film is worth watching for that. Could have done without the graphic bedroom scene early on (not that I'm opposed, just that it wasn't necessary to establish the character as evil), but I'm guessing it was supposed to be a metaphor for how the wealthy barons of the South raped it even after it was no longer the Grand South? If that's the case, then the character is both baron and carpetbagger in one, which is a little odd, but we'll roll with it.

Most Westerns show something totally unrealistic. This shows something like it would actually have been.First, everyone is poor. The trapper family have always been poor. Their neighbours were once prosperous cattle ranchers, but their cattle are gone. They are reduced to trapping, but they don't have much skill with it. They trap illegally on the land of the trapper family.The head of the family, whose wife has died, is religious and puts up with it. But his brother-in-law gets offended and feels the need to do something about it.Separately from this, the daughter of the house is seeing one of the sons of the former rancher.All this happens shortly after the Southern defeat in the US Civil War. Both the rancher family and the returned brother-in-law fought for the South. The brother-in-law is haunted by memories - what we'd now call Post-Traumatic Stress.A slow-burning conflict develops from there. Not exactly an action movie, but showing the grim reality that most films ignore. It clearly doesn't please those who expect Westerns to be like live-action video games.

I never write a review but this movie sucked so bad that I felt compelled to warn others not to waste their time and money. It honestly bored me to tears.I agree with the majority of users who said this movie was terrible, it really is that bad. I found it insipid, irritating, and the worst thing of all: boring. It is not even remotely interesting or entertaining. Did someone put a gun to the actors heads and ask them to make this boring quasi 'western'? The characters are horribly one-dimensional and predictable. The story was also predictable and clichéd. There are overly long, meaningless and self-indulgent scenes of characters beating rugs, shaving their head, eating food for long stretches, it's completely laughable and obvious the movie was trying way way too hard to be artsy, but all it did was make me doze off.Overall this is a massively unimpressive movie with weak performances and a stale story.

Screenwriters John Chriss and Kane Senes have provided a screenplay filled with way too many western cliché's and not enough original content. Re Senes' direction, the sluggish pace causes this film to spiral out of control. The acting in the film is also weak. James Badge Dale is very one dimensional in his role as the war veteran. William Forsythe's character is also a lost cause: acting as the antagonist in the film, you neither understand, nor do you care about the events of his past that have lead to the person he is now. Echoes of War is a film that struggles to resonate any true enjoyment for its viewers. A story that is not original and is in fact quite boring, it is destined to ride off into the sunset and out of our memories very quickly. Don't waste one second of your time on this film. You can thank me later!