Film Brain reviews the first film created by and starring ex-Royal Marines Commandos, but it doesn't balance very well the action genre and exploring the issues veterans face.
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00:00Are you ready for the first film created by and starring Royal Marines Commandos?
00:04Here's my take on Sunray, Fallen Soldier.
00:07After his daughter dies of an OD, war veteran Andy, played by Tip Cullen,
00:11sets about on a mission of revenge to destroy the entire crime ring responsible
00:16and track down her boyfriend Cash, played by Daniel David,
00:19enlisting the aid of his former squad to help him.
00:22Movies starring soldiers or veterans certainly aren't totally new,
00:25Act of Valour springs to mind immediately,
00:28but Daniel Shepard and James Clarke, who wrote, shot, aired and directed the film,
00:32are ex-Royal Marines Commandos themselves,
00:35and rather admirably wanted to use filmmaking as a way for veterans to express themselves.
00:39And the main benefit of having real soldiers is the versatility you simply can't fake,
00:44with lots of accurate tactics and procedures in the firefights,
00:47and the action sequences are by far the best part of Sunray.
00:51The fight sequences are well choreographed and brutal,
00:54and the set pieces are well directed,
00:55with the opening raid on a drug den and a sequence where Cash runs through a firefight,
00:59all covered in a single take with a drone, being especially impressive.
01:03They almost manage to make their tight budget nearly comparable to a Hollywood blockbuster,
01:07even if the flashbacks to Afghanistan appear to have been filmed in the Doctor Who quarry.
01:12Unfortunately, the downside of using real veterans is that most of them are not experienced actors,
01:16and the performances throughout the entire cast can be stilted in the dramatic scenes.
01:21The movie wants to tackle the issue of PTSD,
01:23and veterans struggling to adapt to civilian life,
01:25with characters delivering long monologues about their trauma,
01:28which is well-intentioned, but doesn't mesh at all with the coldly vicious violence.
01:34The revenge plot might be trying to be a metaphor for the toll that killing takes on a person,
01:38but the film just gets confused about what it's trying to be,
01:41and it ends up severely bloating the running time to an almost sluggish two hours long.
01:46Because the two sides of the movie never gel together,
01:49it culminates in the movie self-destructing in the final scene with a misguided last-minute twist,
01:54which makes more than half the film make no sense whatsoever.
01:58It's a confusing and unsatisfying ending,
02:00and I think you can make a good action flick with real soldiers,
02:03or a good drama with veterans examining PTSD,
02:07but it's very hard to do both at the same time, and this isn't First Blood.