Reptileenbu
Did you people see the same film I saw?
Dynamixor
The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.
Siflutter
It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.
isiah-46018
El Camino directed by David E. Talbert. This movie has been the most unique Black-Comedy Christmas Movie I have ever seen, it has the happy touchy feeling as the classic "It's A Wonderful Life" and the dark gritty humor as "Bad Santa." It's a movie that will offend and a movie that will make those with weaker hearts sad and those with hyper-logical thought process angry. But what makes this movie so watchable in my view, is how possible this scenario is. Hostage situations are the most tense crime thrillers in the genre. This one tells the story of a man in the wrong place at the wrong time and how a simple altercation exaggerated into a catastrophe. By the end of the movie, I was so stunned by the beautiful scene elements. The intensity, the calm music, the hopelessness. It is a movie that is specifically understood by certain people, not everyone will see eye to eye on the quality of this film. It has the same classic potential as "National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation." Which was a comedy that was not perfectly understood by every viewer, it has a unique confusion. This movie has that same Classical Christmas Confusion
bobcobb301
I wasn't expecting much from this. Netflix and its original movies haven't been great, and on paper the cast was nothing special, but I was surprised by how frequently I laughed.Yes, it had a cliched premise, and you could see the ending coming from a mile away, but it still ended up being entertaining. I actually laughed at Dax Shepard's character and I usually can't stand him. Kurtwood Smith is still comedy gold with the right material. Michelle Mylett I hadn't seen before, but she gave a solid and understated performance as Kate and made me a fan in the process.It's a good Christmas movie. Don't expect too much and you won't be let down.
TownRootGuy
It was so predictable I thought it was The Village 2. Massive writing fail on the plot in the last third, pretty much everything was thought out as well as a toddler-planned, bank heist. Too much was done or not done just to setup the wholly predictable ending.It does have a great cast, some very nice eye candy, a little action AND you'll laugh at the dumbasses in front of the camera.This is pretty fun until you realize they're not going to fix the obvious, that what you're seeing is just bad writing. Nothing in this made me angry so I should be able to watch it every 10 years.
classicsoncall
Another reviewer for this picture says he doesn't believe a town like the one in the story could have so many stupid people in it. Well I beg to differ on that. My town only has about three thousand residents and I could probably come up with a cast for this film. It would have been even easier about four decades ago when the population was less than half that. Seriously, one needs to live in a small town to understand, but as John Mellencamp would put it, "that's good enough for me".Now I haven't seen Tim Allen in many movies, I basically know him as Tim the Tool Man Taylor from the hit TV show. I also know he dabbled as Santa Clause in a series of flicks, so to see him here as an alcoholic dirt bag was quite the shock to the system. Funny, but I never made the father-son connection with Eric Norris (Luke Grimes) until the very end of the story when Larry (Allen) dredged up his bad experience in Vietnam. Don't be fooled by the title of the picture. The fact that it's Christmas time in the movie is ancillary to the story line. Vincent D'Onofrio, who portrays deputy Carl Hooker is straight out of Stallone's "First Blood" playbook as an ignorant redneck, and the film's fatal ending for Tim Allen's character mimics Eastwood at the conclusion of "Gran Torino". I think the film would have been better served to end it right after the siege at Vicente's Liquor Mart, but I guess they needed to tie up Eric's relationship with Kate (Michelle Mylett) for the classic happy ending.
