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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mel O&#039;Drama" data-source="post: 439344" data-attributes="member: 23">Run Hide Fight (2021) <img src="https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fm.media-amazon.com%2Fimages%2FM%2FMV5BYzA4OTNhMzgtN2VkYS00MmUxLWEzOTItOTYzYjc2ZTkzYTI4XkEyXkFqcGc%40._V1_FMjpg_UX1000_.jpg&f=1&nofb=1&ipt=ac14d2d2d84a1ffd32ca17d0defe8650140235ef498c87cbedc80461fae091fe" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="width: 619px" />A spontaneous one, viewed within seconds of stumbling upon it in a categorised list on Prime. Had I thought about it I might not have continued. But here we are.A question of taste lurked at the back of my mind. I have the benefit of watching from a country where strict gun laws mean that school shootings, thankfully, are extremely rare. We are thirty years on from the Dunblane Massacre, which brought about significant changes in legislation. But I am still touched and horrified by news of such events in American schools. Either this film was going to send an important message or it was going to be exploitative.Sadly, it leans towards the latter. Certainly, it says nothing profound about gun laws. In fact, guns prove to be the solution in this film. One could argue that it's making some kind of Hestonesque statement about the right to bear arms, and that guns are only dangerous in the wrong hands. But even this doesn't land, because it ultimately devolves into generic Hollywood fare where the plucky heroine turns the tables and kicks arse single-handedly (think of a  female, teenage version of Harrison Ford in Air Force One and you're on the right lines).There is some promise in the tension and the occasional brutality. As an ensemble piece, this could have worked better. Instead, it becomes about a family of superheroes playing saviour to everyone else and doing what even the law enforcement cannot do to save the say (the father - I kid you not - sneaks into the school grounds, unspotted on an arriving SWAT van so that he can take out one of the killers from outside). And of course the threat of being held at gunpoint isn't Hollywood enough, so the van has to be rigged with explosives that could go off at any second.The clincher for me comes with the final resolution where the protagonist is surrounded by law enforcement, tending to her wounds, when she spots one of the assailants sneaking away from the scene. Instead of simply pointing him out to the dozens of officers, she decides to steal back a rifle and go after him herself.The antagonists fit all the archetypes. The leader is the charming sociopath, craving notoriety and fame and forming sexual relationships with two of his vulnerable gang (a brother and sister) to manipulate them into doing his bidding (thus evoking both Leopold and Loeb and to a lesser extent Bonnie and Clyde). The brother is the one with mental health difficulties who has been radicalised, while the fourth member is the overweight geek who has been bullied by his peers to the point of snapping.It all ends as you would expect from a Hollywood action thriller, becoming far less than you would hope for in a film with such a premise.While I didn't know it at the time, the films premise wasn't actually the most exploitative thing present.The story opens with an uncomfortably graphic deer slaying. I consoled myself with the "no animals were harmed in the making of this movie" mantra, thankful that judicious effects can create a degree of realism without the need to slay animals for real. Reading up on the film after this, I was wrong. <a href="https://www.dallasobserver.com/arts-culture/dallas-filmmakers-arranged-the-shooting-of-a-deer-for-a-scene-in-run-hide-fight-11980825/" target="_blank">A live deer was shot dead on camera for real</a>.Moments after the shooting, the father begins talking to the daughter who has fired the shot about how the still live deer is suffering because it wasn't a clean kill. Just as he is getting into his monologue, the daughter runs up with a huge rock and slams the deer's head. Even though as I watched I knew it was somewhat clunky foreshadowing, this moment still jolted me a little. But this pales compared to the distaste I feel at knowing the carcass of the slaughtered deer was used for this scene, too.Had I known any of this to be the case, I would have given this film a wide berth. Such questionable morals around filmmaking do not deserve to be rewarded with views. And if a filmmaker is going to leak excitedly at the idea that they can create such revulsion, that's their delusion. Anyone can behave in a way that shocks or disgusts. It doesn't make one an artist, and this film is not art by any stretch of the imagination.Much as I dislike this film for learning that its filmmakers lack humanity, its mediocrity means the end does not justify the means. And I can't think of a bigger waste.</blockquote>

Verification: What month follows July?