Diagonaldi Very well executed

Supelice Dreadfully Boring

Aubrey Hackett While it is a pity that the story wasn't told with more visual finesse, this is trivial compared to our real-world problems. It takes a good movie to put that into perspective.

Gary The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

brdmacfreak A cheap, totally predictable copy of predator. There was not one surprise in the entire movie. Don't waste your time.The character development is virtually non-existent. The fight scenes are so fake it is amazing that an old running from many machines guns unloading clips doesn't get at the least, winged. Even the "crew" finding a liquor bottle from the 1970s and drinking it is, well, lame.I wish I could get my time back from watching the movie. I kept waiting for it to get better. Don't waste your time.The old man must have been not just a soldier, but an Olympian runner as he manages to beat men half his age, through tunnels while the youngster are above ground hauling butt.Watch the Expendables for the umpteenth time again.

chaugnurfaugn-269-83012 This is a bizarre Canadian production that openly steals not just style, characters and scenes but even entire lines from the Michael Mann movie, Heat.The plagiarism is so blatant that I would encourage Mann to sue the pants off Neil Mackay and his writer, wait for it, Sean McAulay. Yep, that's right Neil/McAuley (the very name of the lead protagonist/antagonist in Heat).After the weak set up introducing the Vietnam vet, we are treated to a somewhat exciting presentation of the bank robbers fleeing the scene of their crime in... an ambulance. One of their number is shot. The group dump the ambulance for a getaway car (Mackay - assuming that's his real name - falls short of having them plant an explosive on the ambulance and set it on fire). It's like someone took the script of Heat, chopped it up and replaced bits and pieces to make something new but extremely familiar.Several shot compositions are not just reminiscent of Heat but are IDENTICAL, from the way the lead role speaks to the way he holds the handset at the public phone booth. "What happened out there?" - "don't ask," I mutter to myself, "you don't wanna know" the guy on screen says. WTF?! If you know Heat (which is a superior production to this pile of tripe in virtually every possible sense) you'll be struck dumb by what is basically an initial copy, stealing bits and pieces of that film before embarking on a pointless and ill-focused killer-in-the-woods set up. Ridiculous.

Paul Andrews Battleground starts as six armed thieves make their getaway from a bungled bank robbery in an ambulance, having shot two cop's dead at the crime scene they are in a desperate hurry to get out of the country & Mitch (Bryan Larkin) calls in a favour to get himself & his men flown out of the US but they will have to wait for twelve hours. The gang decide to head into an isolated forest to wait & try to avoid capture but during the night their van mysterious disappears, with over three million dollars & a long way to go they agree to walk & steal a car on the way but they are not alone in the forest as a deranged Vietnam veteran (Hugh Lambe) begins to kill the men one at a time using traps & his own sniper rifle. The gang of thieves quickly realise they are being hunted & must find a way to turn the tables or all end up dead & you can't spend three million dollars if your dead, can you?Originally called Skeleton Lake (which is odd since there's no lake in it much less one called Skeleton lake...) this Canadian production was co-written & directed by Neil Mackay & while it's nothing special it's watchable enough in a routine competent sort of way, I've seen a lot better but then I've also seen a lot worse. What we have here is your typical backwoods survival film where some random character's are chased & killed in some remote forest somewhere, we've seen the setting before, we've seen the group of desperate men on the run after a robbery gone wrong before too & if I'm not very much mistaken we have also seen the deranged Vietnam Veteran who goes psycho before as well. As I said Battleground is nothing new & it's fairly predictable too with the only surprises of any note being how each victim is killed. The killer is given no motivation whatsoever other than he served in Vietnam, none of the character's have any real personality & are merely there to make the numbers up & get killed. At just over 80 minutes long Battleground moves along at a decent pace I suppose & it competent for what it is so as long as you don't expect too much you could do a lot worse than this.Unfortunately too much of Battleground is nothing more than the various character's running around a forest, there are a couple of minor shoot-outs but not much action. While there's not much gore there is one sequence which is quite nasty & almost at odds with the rest of the film, the Vietnam nutter cuts a guy's head off, pokes his eyeball out with a scalpel, proceeds to slice his face & scalp off to leave the fleshless skull before putting the guy's skinned face mask on the table next to the skull. It's a nasty scene which as I said is removed from anything else in the film which is otherwise fairly tame with nothing more than a few gunshot wounds & blood splatter.Shot in Ontario in Canada this is surprisingly well made with no hand-held jerky photography or quick machine gun editing so I have to give it some credit for that at least, are filmmakers finally realising these two annoying techniques are universally disliked? By me anyway. The acting isn't up to much, end of story.Battleground isn't a terrible film it's just that it's not a very good one either, it's a competent horror thriller that you will watch & probably have forgotten about within a couple of days. It could have been better but it could have been so much worse too.

myloveincruz I believe this is the first positive review I've been motivated to write. I am doing so because there are no other reviews and this low budget flick deserves attention. I'd say it's a clever predator vs. the well-armed and ruthless protagonists, rather than the serial killer vs. the kids camping in the woods kind of movie and it does that well, so if you like that kind of thing, you'll dig it. I'm personally more into brain candy but this was an enjoyable ride. I'm not a big fan of this kind of premise but this has good writing so it's different with writing, directing, acting, camera work and not the usual number and quality of suspension of disbelief moments that have me bitching at the screen. The beginning drew me in and since the story kept me guessing while I tried to figure out the characters. I surprised myself when I realized I was actually into it. I see Neil MacKay directed and wrote with Sean McAulay and IMDb has this as Neil's first film, so bravo! I expect this is going to get attention and you'll get money to spend on your next project and hopefully my high expectations for you will prove justified. Not greatly challenging rolls for the actors but they did good jobs and I saw a promising spark in a few of them. I have criticisms about realism but they are spoilers and gee, this isn't a biography or a documentary, ha. Also, it had a bit of humor to it, which is always a welcome relief for me, after relentless brutality. Gosh, I went on too long. Loved the cigar lighting scene, you'll know which one I mean, had me grinning. Gosh, that was a lot of praise, hmm, now I feel I deserve a share of that, what was it? 3.2 Million, from the bank heist. Oh well, I got on a roll so I'll count it as a good deed.