Rating: F
Dir: Chris W. Hill
Star: Lamont Clayton, Julia Ling, Jon Budinoff, Sarah Kozer
a.k.a. Gang of Roses 2 or Ride or Die
Woo-hoo! You wait ages for an ‘F’-grade, and then two come along at once! Following on the heels of the awful Model From Hell, comes this – which may be even worse, in that it lacks even the “amusingly bad” entertainment value of Model. Sold as some kind of girls-with-guns Western, it doesn’t even reach the mediocre standards of the first Gang of Roses, and that’s no surprise, since it is entirely unconnected with it [the ‘true’ sequel was filmed recently]. The plot revolves around a couple of people who have grudges against outlaw Clyde Barrister (Clayton) – for example, he killed the sister of Mei Lin (Ling). Clyde and his gang are heading to a ghost town for some reason, and so the forces ranged against him pull together to take him on there.
However, do not be misled in to thinking there is any tension or excitement generated by this scenario. There is, however, a lot of sitting around campfires chatting. An awful lot. In footage that is sometimes so grainy, it appears to have been recorded on a first-generation mobile phone with a dodgy battery. I should probably have expected this, given that Kozer, for example, possessed no acting experience beyond a few bondage videos, and was cast largely as a stunt because she finished runner-up on reality train-wreck, Joe Millionaire. She’s about as good as you’d expect, but I can’t say she particularly stands out. [Ling, incidentally, appears to have managed to erase the film entirely from her IMDB filmography, a very fortunate escape]
A million times worse are the technical aspects, such as any number of shots where the actors have their heads cut off by the framing, and others where the camera has to move jerkily to try and keep them in sight. The music contains any number of wildly-inappropriate songs that put the “rap” in “crap”, and Ling gets a poorly-conceived martial-arts fight, for no apparent reason except that she’s Asian. Right from the opening few minutes, it’s clear that we are in for an excruciating cinematic experience, and if you continue to watch, hoping things might pick up, you only have yourself to blame. Because they most definitely don’t. Irredeemably poor on almost every level.