SoftInloveRox Horrible, fascist and poorly acted

2freensel I saw this movie before reading any reviews, and I thought it was very funny. I was very surprised to see the overwhelmingly negative reviews this film received from critics.

Ella-May O'Brien Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

Darin One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

Tom Dooley Scott Eastwood plays John who lives in California where the sun always shines and they all just live to catch a wave because surfing is all that matters. Then there is his brother Ben who is so good that everyone wants a photo of him pushing the boundaries of mans understanding by seeing him splash about a bit in the ocean.Enter a femme fatale who Ben is having some sort of emotionally unstable relationship with. But oh dear she has also caught the eye of the local Latino cartels' son and heir and, as in a bad film string Daniel Day Lewis, 'There will be blood'. We also have side issues of anger management, drugs and some trite story from the Iraq war.Now this is not a bad production and there are a couple of performances of note; indeed Scott Eastwood can act – see 'The Longest Ride' but this just lacks all the essential ingredients that make a good filmatic experience. The actual script is the main failing but overly one dimensional, stereo typical characters do not help and despite the well realised plot twist I found myself just not really caring. It is not a surf film either or a thriller of really a revenge tale just a bit of a not all the believable drama. If you are still interested then go for a rental as I can guarantee you will never even consider seeing this twice.

SillyGayBoy Sometimes something tragic like death can be so meaningless and stupid it can hollow someone out from the stupidity of it all. There are different kinds of deaths and in them can be meaningless and preventable ones. I feel that this story explores that concept well.Well acted and all with faces I had never seen, and a story that was moving and unsettling.This story is relatable in an unusual way. My vet accidentally killed my cat after the office told me they would not do the surgery that day because I explained she had food. Well my vet did not know and did the surgery anyway and it killed her.This movie reminds me of that a lot. Made me cry, felt cathartic and relieving. Sometimes death really is meaningless, and sad, and happens because someone did something stupid. I am glad a movie can capture what I have been feeling. Thank you for making it.

Eddie_weinbauer I wanted to see this, because I wondered if Scott Eastwood was half as good as he's dad.Sadly No.OR at least not yet. The movie centers around a white-trash pot smoking surfing family,and some pothead surfers.The two guys the movie is suppose to center around comes off as uninteresting,one dimensional and boring. They act like two immature douche bags who never grew up. (They remind me of the kids from high school, who you just knew would never really grow out of the whole life's a party phase.)You can't really be bothered caring about them,cause there's no everyday life,there's nothing there to identify with. They surf and smoke pot,that's it! That's all they doWhat was suppose to be the main plot, seem to be that this really great surfer kid,is getting killed because he mess around with an ex girlfriend,who now is dating a gang banger.So he's older brother get into a fight for him with said gang- banger,so he's little brother can hook up with he's ex again. Than he go ahead dumps her a few days later on a party,he's mother even helps him. By this part of the movie I'd all ready stopped caring about any of them.Jeff Fahey is suppose to be some guru, I think.You never see him surf though,only carrying a surf board The problem is there's no forward momentum in the story.You feel its just some random stuff put together.

idavem If you've seen the film, this review is for you. While Dawn Patol is a flawed film, it's an ambitious attempt to explore serious and universal themes, set against a backdrop of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the economic meltdown of 2008. The themes include racism, sexism, parenting, what it means to be loyal to friends and family, the search for purpose and the sense of alienation, connection with others and the search for self-identity. Most of the action revolves around Scott Eastwood's John, who has a problem connecting with his parents and who doesn't have a girlfriend (while his brother Ben has sex with every female within his eyesight). He lives with his parents and makes a meager living repairing surfboards, although he's doing arguably better than his father and his father's friends, who have lost their jobs in the recession. The problem with the movie is a script with situations and dialog that veer into territory that is unintentionally campy. The editing is less less than stellar. As a result, there are some facets to the story that are probably going to be overlooked:The film title has a triple meaning. It refers to a military patrol, to surfers who hang out with each other in the morning while waiting for waves, and to the early morning discovery of the dead brother Ben, the budding surfing star and golden child to his parents, on the beach.The location of the movie takes place in the water, on the beach and in beach towns, except for one out-of-joint scene when John, is supposed to be in Afghanistan. The scenery, though set within sand dunes, is obviously the same scenery used earlier in the film for the beach, particularly late in the film. While this may look like an expedient way to portray a desert-like setting it's also a metaphor linking cultural warfare to physical war: John is a fighting the same battle, whether at home with his parents or in a far away war at the behest of the government, a battle that pits the desire to find self-identity with the need to connect with with someone or something larger than himself. The underrated actress Julie Carmen plays a pivotal role as the mother of the slain Miguel. Eventually she's revealed as a wealthy, enigmatic, potentially criminal Hispanic living the good life. It's a life in a house behind gates that are the bars that lock her into a prison of her own making. She also serves as a counterpoint to the stereotypical low-life Mexicans we see at the start of the film, where John is hanging out with his father and Ben.She puts on clothing meant to disguise her identity (presumeably in case she decides to kill John). She morphs into someone else: a Middle Eastern woman, who, like an aggrieved Muslim, insults John by striking him with her shoe. And where do Mrs. Rivera and John find themselves when he reveals he killed Miguel? On the same sand dunes at the beach that also served as the stand-in for Afghanistan.By the film's end, John's search for his own identity, for acceptance by his parents and for a deep connection with someone else has led him, sadder and wiser, to the place where that search began, a state of alienation.