As seen in the post-apocalyptic movies such as The Road and The Book of Eli , life after nuclear or biological warfare usually ends up with people struggling to find food and shelter from those awful cannibals. It seems people are becoming more cynical towards humanity’s future, not that I can blame them. However, if movies are made like White Wall in the future, I think it’ll be better off for mankind to become extinct.
The premise of the film is decent, if not a little farfetched. A deadly virus called VXll is unleashed and kills most of the world’s population. The non-infected survivors build a large wall around four quarantined cities. The protagonist, Shawn, and the antagonist, Jude, were both orphans who were forced to fight in an internment camp before they escaped. They go their separate ways until Shawn has to stop Jude before he performs a dangerous plan to destroy the remaining cities.
For all post-apocalyptic junkies out there, consider this a word of warning. Do not watch this film. It’s bad. It’s really bad. First off, the acting is fake and robotic. It seemed more like an audition tape than a feature film. There are moments where I thought it wouldn’t be entirely implausible if the actors were reading cue cards off screen. None of the actors portray any sort of emotion and everything felt too forced.
The setting of the film is also terrible. Instead of the usual broken down cars and blown out buildings, we get a city in Texas or something. If post-biological warfare makes the world turn into New Mexico, it doesn’t seem all that bad. I wouldn’t have been surprised if I saw a casino in the background, but no such luck. The wardrobe wasn’t much better. Instead of worn-out, raggedy clothing, we get what looks like clothes sponsored by Old Navy (not much of a difference now that I think about it). Everything about the setting makes it hard to believe that outside the wall, there are other dead humans.
I thought the action scenes would be the saving attribute of this film…but they weren’t. All this buildup of how Shawn and Jude have incredible fighting skills goes out the window when Shawn bounces around like he’s playing hopscotch and throws one kick every 5 minutes. His attacks seem so mild and inaccurate that it seems unlikely he can knock someone out with one jab, especially since it was to the arm. There’s a fight scene (if you can call it that) in the desert that had me chuckling because there was a lot of standing around, looking tough at each other while spinning knives or pipes. Then the action begins and ends with one strike to the stomach or face. This repeats itself for the entire film.
Now onto the thing that really grinds my gears; the camera. The cinematography is horrendous. During some of the action scenes, it becomes obvious that the cameraman is trying to focus on Shawn because he constantly zooms in and out on him, often obscuring the audience’s view of the action. There were many times when the character in focus was not in the center of the screen. I was wondering if this was a stylistic choice by the director, but there’s nothing in the background to see and after a minute or two, the camera realigns the character into the center. I’m guessing it was a mistake on the part of the cinematographer.
Save yourself the time and don’t watch White Wall. Watch Toy Story 3 in 3D instead!
Rating: 3/10
