Recon 2020: The Caprini Massacre (2004)

This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

The movie is wonderful and true, an act of love in all its contradictions and complexity

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

What the hell is wrong with the people behind this crap? Here is a better question, what the hell is wrong with me renting this crap?????? I was only able to stomach the first 15 minutes or so of this lame film. I knew that this would be an extremely low budget film. But, some of this actors were soooooooooooooooooo bad. From the Sergeant all the way to a pilot!!!. I've seen some movies that the budget was like 27.00 dollars but the acting was good. This had the worst special effects, the worst acting and the most stupid plot ever. Oh, and one more thing, in the beginning just before the movie started, they did an opening credit thing like in Star Wars but this time they had some guy reading the wording. It was soooooooooooo bad 'cause this guy sounded like he was dying to say "dude" at the end of every word. AVOID AT ALL COST!!!!

What is there to do on a Saturday night when you don't have a date, and the kids are busy at the fair, and you can make your own fresh popcorn ? Rent a science-fiction movie !! Well, duh, that was easy.OK -- so I am trolling in the big box movie rental joint and the case for this DVD falls on the floor while I am looking at something else.So I pick it up and read the teaser on the back. So I don't recognize any of the people who are in the movie or who helped make this flick.That's not always a bad thing. Like, when I first went to see "28 Days Later ..." in the cinema, I did not know anything about it or most of the actors associated with it. Man was that a great evening !! When it came out on DVD I rented it about five times and then finally got the DVD box set as a Christmas present, so in all I have seen that fine film about eleventeen times. In that story, the first fifteen and 1/2 minutes are so strong that it completely cancels out the one or two minutes of wandering angst that follow on.Every character in "28 Days Later" is unforgettable, even the three Animal Rights radicals who kick off the whole shebang ( including the Finnish guy who's main lines are "oh my God, oh my God" ).Fifteen minutes into this alleged science-fiction mini-epic, I was so hoping for a thunderstorm with lightning strikes so that I could just get up and go throw up, but no, I had to watch the whole thing.Hell, I paid actual money to rent this dog, it wasn't a freebie ! My time would have been better spent logging on to some traffic cam network in some distant city and watching the cars go by, or not go by.It was just that bad, and I do mean incompetent, confusing, badly recorded, badly edited, and did I mention confusing ?? Please help me. Please hit me hard if I ever mention this barking dog of a sci-fi adventure, again. No wonder they changed the name.Arf Arf.

I have been reading nothing but bad reviews on this movie, and yes I have watched it. Although it is a horrible movie and an insult to film production, it is a great movie in it's same right. All of these people who tear this movie apart missed the beauty of the whole concept, hilarity. The movie is more of a joke than anything and as much as I wish I had been able to take those 2 hours of my life back, I LOVE this movie now. It is a movie that takes time to grow on you. Also, if you don't like B Rated movies and like the blockbuster Hits, then stop renting them :P lol. This movie and Ginger Dead man are both in my collection of the best/worst movies of all time. personally I recommend watching this movie at least once because I am sure that you will come to see that it is not a complete waste of your time, because there is always a silver lining. Just always keep in mind that it is a B RATED MOVIE AT BEST :P Man I love em!

If you thought "Wing Commander" was the ultimate space combat epic, then this might make you happy. But probably not. At least WC had Matthew Lillard and Saffron Burrows and David Suchet. There's no one with anything like that level of talent to be seen here. Every once in a while, my curiosity gets the better of me - or is it my inner masochist? - and I feel the need to rent an obvious "Z" grade direct-to-DVD movie, just for the hell of it. My ostensible reason is to look for buried diamonds among the dross, and sometimes this does pay off - as in the recent gem from Down Under called "Undead", which I otherwise would never have seen. My gamble didn't pay off this time, though, OH no. No indeed. The only way a person can derive any enjoyment from "Recon 2020" is with their brains and discriminating sensibilities parked solidly in "neutral". Or drunk. Or high.I will say a couple things in favor of "Recon 2020". First, although the film obviously had a tiny budget, the director and crew must have worked extremely hard to make the most out of every dollar they had for the movie's visuals. The movie looks as though it was shot on digital video (similar to "28 Days Later"), and like "Undead", it looks like someone spent a lot of time and effort in post production to add in filtered lighting and special effects to make the thing look decent. As a results,"Recon 2020" looks much better than it deserves - though I can't say the same for the sound design. Similarly, since the budget for props and scenery was minimal, the production crew went with spray paint graffiti and tagging on most of the backgrounds, a touch that lent weight and solidity to the surroundings that might have gone missing otherwise. (One drawback to this choice is that much of the movie appears to be taking place in the projects of Chicago, rather than an alien planet).The drop ship looks pretty good, as do a few of the other mechanized SFX such as the mercenary ship and the ED-209 like "mecha" that the soldiers first encounter.The other nice thing I can say is although the direction and acting are uneven, at its best there are a few moments of decent action and dialog: There's a cyborg tussle that has some "ooomph" to it, there are a couple of OK set speeches; there's an encounter with a 3 headed monster that evokes nostalgic memories of "Earth Vs. The Spider"; there's an unsettling gory look at the remains of tortured colonists; there's a nicely executed recording of a distress message on one of the "transponders" discovered by the soldiers; and a couple of exchanges of dialog sound as though human beings might actually utter them under some circumstance.And that's about it. The rest of the movie (85% or so) is simply lame. The plot is an unconvincing mix of vampires and werewolves and cyborgs and jokes about anal probes and mercenaries and "Starship Troopers" and "Aliens". Most of the time, the acting is quite amateurish. Most of the soldiers' dialog is completely mishandled - these are supposed to be hard-bitten combat veterans? They whine and bitch like high school girls. And the poor guy cast to play "Seageant Sharpe" is in completely over his head. He's got some potential, but the director just leaves him flapping in the breeze most of the time. The blonde who plays "Fooks" is awful; she reads her lines as if her inspiration was Jennifer Aniston's character from "Friends". She's quite attractive, but she is still the most jarring and irritating actor in the film. On the positive side, the woman who plays the friendly cyborg is perhaps the best of the bunch, probably because the role doesn't require much of her beyond looking impassive and stoic.Worst of all, the director simply does not know how to stage a convincing (and involving) combat scene..or even how to pace a simple dramatic scene when the weapons aren't firing. It's as if they just shot the actors in a bunch of poses and stunts they thought would look neat (or like their favorite movies) and relied on the post-production edit to force some sense and rhythm into it...but when it came time for the post production, the editor couldn't bear to throw any of it away, and so they just used "everything". The results are a mess, alternating between frenetic and incoherent and repetitious and boring. I often simply could not tell what was going on, and I couldn't find a reason to care. The final scene leaves an opening for a sequel, and apparently one is being filmed. I find this hard to fathom, as does the idea that this film had any kind of audience or made a dime in profits. But believe me, I have no plans whatsoever to watch that sequel. My masochistic impulses only go so far. Totally devoted hardcore sci-fi action fans might get more out of this than I did...maybe.