Angli: The Movie (2005) User Reviews

So and So Movie.

[sengleaboy · 5/10 · 18 November 2006]

Considering the money shortage they had to work with and that I've seen big budgeted movies which weren't better than this one I decided to give it a five.

There where though some serious goofs that with some minor attention could have been avoided, let's take the first scene for instance. Not even the Incredible Hulk could have had the strength to keep suspended a ten year old girl sitting on a chair just by holding a thin rope she was tied to with only one hand and at the same time chat calmly with one of the Angli. Moutain climbers should hire his services I think. Another blemish, when there was the closeup shot of the rope in question, this (the rope) wasn't straight showing it was being stretched.

Another thing which really annoyed me in this movie was the huge amount of adverts it contained, at times it was more like seeing a two hour shopping-ad rather than a movie.

I will not comment on special effects as these cost money to do which the producers hadn't much. I still hope to see more local productions like this one though cause "practice makes perfect" as the English say. Only by experimenting more will Maltese cinematography improve.

This film is Embarrassing

[karl_consiglio · 1/10 · 5 May 2006]

This is the cheesiest film of all time. I regret having even given it a chance. I want those two hours or so of my life back. It embarrasses me. They don't have any idea how to make a good film. They thought that to make a good film it is all about spending lots of money to make it and being all technologically up to date and not going cheap. There is no point in making this film, what a waste of time, my toilet is deeper than this. I mean even the sheer lack of imagination and bad taste. And the Maltese don't speak English with that stupid accent, they only do so when they want to impress foreigners. John Montanaro is an old friend of mine and I always thought he had a wonderful sense of humour, i was always impressed by how clever his jokes were and how he always managed to keep a straight face when saying them, so i am sure inside while playing his role in this farce he is cracking up but would do anything to have his moment of fame, he is such a narcissist. The Maltese are so obsessed with living it up, living it flash and classy, even if they boast their religious faith. The Maltese hamalli, low life capitalists that they are, rich Arabs from The South of Europe and the North of Africa with a mentality trying to live the American dream. They would take a shot of an elegant car(I recognized it from when the Queen was here on that commonwealth occasion) with the use of a crane and maybe they would do it quite well but for no apparent reason whatsoever. A sheer lack of ideas all the way through. This film just gets worse and worse till i did not even know what I was looking at anymore. And how sad to use Fort St Elmo again after it was used for 'Midnight Express', what was he thinking? That it would make his film somewhat good? And enough of these Van Damme type movies for crying out loud, there never was a good one anyway. I could make/direct a better film with my eyes closed.

Probably the funniest film I've ever seen

[pauldes · 1/10 · 18 March 2006]

OK so it's funny, really funny. but the problem is it's supposed to be an action driven crime thriller! Bad narrative has been played out by possibly, the worst possible group of actors, apart from poor Mike Moller of course, who's name in the film funnily enough happens to be Mike Moller. The special effects make those in 1980 look futuristic, I mean it was a low budget production, but surely from all the advertising in the film they could have scraped enough money together to buy a mid range mac and some half decent special effects program for it, not the 486 using corel draw that it appears to use. I'd also like to point out that i get a better quality picture from my JVC camcorder when i use decent lighting, than they managed with their 'professional equipment'.

Disastrous.

[Metal_Storm · 1/10 · 1 August 2005]

Extremely cheap and laughable. This 'movie' was probably done at one go and the film makers did not even take the time to review what they had done. Or they didn't care less. Practically everything about this movie sucked big time, excuse me for the language. During and after the movie I felt angry and amused at the same time. So, let us mention some of the horrible disasters in the movie. Acting. Purely, 100% laughing stock. Where's emotion? Do you calmly state that your sister has been shot while she is dieing right in front of you? After the person in question died, we see the husband a tad sad in a couple of the following scenes. He puts some flowers on her grave in a neutral mood and basically forgets the whole deal. Wow. The blonde girl - not the one that betrays them - (I don't know the names) was easily among the most horrible actors I have ever seen. She looked like she was constantly reading from a book. Enough on acting. Filming. The first shot was filmed from a helicopter. The camera was bobbing up and down. I thought "hmm, maybe that's on purpose?" Then it also moved in other scenes so I confirmed my suspicions. And colour. The colour was very unsaturated. It was similar to news filming, haha. There were also a couple of points were the saturation or some colour scale changed suddenly. The camera angles were totally uninspired and oftentimes awkward. There were a couple of shots which I actually liked but otherwise, forget about it. Audio. As others mentioned there are too many dropouts. The audio is also not synchronized in not only one, but marvelously MANY scenes. I was plain disgusted by this. A cheap budget has nothing to do with these mistakes. Its plain carelessness. The music also lacked something most of the time. 'Effects'. Haha. Just plain funny. The scanner would have looked infinitely better without a cheap effect like it had. The explosions were stupid. 256 color and out of perspective, not to mention size. OK I'll give them the fact that they did not have such a good budget after all. But in that case don't try to make a movie at all, or do not use such crap effects in the first place. The big "Angli" splash at the beginning was terrible. Slowmo was also overused and/or used unaesthetically. Plot. Someone said he liked the plot. In general, the plot was too simple and undeveloped. I cannot say it was crap, since I've seen Hollywood movies with crappier story lines, but there were some hilarious parts too. The part where the main actors were attacked from a freighter was just stupid. The car could have done one of two extremely simple things: 1) sped by and left the freighter behind. 2) braked immediately with the result that the freighter kept moving forward and lost them after a quick turn of the car. Also, a fact that Maltese people should have noticed, the chase started in the bypass and ended miles away. No suspense of disbelief at all. Two other things. One, the fact that they got out of the overturned car and didn't even look around for their assailants, who also vanished from the scene without checking whether they were dead as they hoped. Two, the car overturned in broad daylight. The towing truck came in the night. Blame it on Maltese inefficiency, though I've heard that those towing agencies are actually pretty quick. The producers could have done much better with whatever small budget they had. A three-month school project would have been shorter but better. This should have been called Angli: Disaster Movie.

About the fact that someone gave this movie a 10, I can't imagine who would have done so. As you might have understood had you read my review, budgets wouldn't have made bad actors start acting good. Nor would it have synchronized the audio. 12 Angry Men of 1954 is an amazing movie shot mostly in one room. The budget for Angli could have made a movie just as good. The same goes for The Conversation. Excellent production, har de har har!

A vegetable could have directed this film better.

[martinbonnici · 1/10 · 7 January 2006]

This is really a pathetic attempt at film making. I wasn't even going to post about it but seeing that some people gave it high marks I just had to warn the rest.

I'm not going to comment about the production quality because it was a low budget film, however, not having a decent budget is no excuse for having a bad narrative, bad direction, an awful story and an even worse script.

It's a totally amateur production with no sense of film making or story telling. Scenes jump from one to the next with no flow what so ever, a vegetable could have directed this better.

For those that gave it high marks, please, I know you're proud of a film that was done in Malta but by being proud of this film, and praising it, you are doing a disservice to your country.

Worst Movie Ever!

[Aaron_borg · 1/10 · 5 July 2006]

I am a Maltese Man. I have seen this movie.This cast is very boring, These artists haven't Filmed another movie ever. They are all so boring. The story is not great, it is very bad. When the House explodes the explosion is not real. A low budget Movie. 1/10. the worst movie ever. Its Distrubter is Kateri Entertainment and they filmed one film only too. What a disastrous movie "Angli the movie". and this film is only sold in Malta and in Maltese Teathers only. If you try to find it USA you can't also because Malta is a very small country.This film has no Special Features, Scene selections, Subtitles, The making of "Angli the movie" This film has nothing. This is the Worst film in the world.

Thanks for reading the comment, Aaron Borg.

Pleasantly surprised

[dave-800 · 7/10 · 29 July 2005]

I went to see this movie with great reluctance. I had seen the trailer and it looked like some cheap excuse for a film with stupid dialogue, bad acting and very bad special effects, and probably some poor excuse for a plot.

So it was with some surprise that as soon as the film started, it had gripped me, probably with the dramatic effect of a realistic and unfortunately not too uncommon episode of a life-and-death situation in a cop's life. True, the acting, dialogue, plot and special effects were poor in the extreme. But the plot was no different that a hundred other crime thrillers that Hollywood releases each year. As for the special effects, the explosions looked like they were taken straight off some video game from your 15-year old computer. And, it was the first time that I could tell that the film was shot in digital as I could actually see the pixels. But still, there was one particular car chase that ended up with a nice car aerial somersault that was clearly shot live with no CGI. For a debuting film industry, it was pretty impressive.

Some of the fight sequences were admittedly laughable. In fact I could not help laughing out loud in the theatre at the unexpected entrance of Agent Mark Möller in a grocer to the rescue of our supposed cop hero in a hold-up, putting the criminal to shame with some kung fu style moves. But this was actually intended to be funny anyway.

So I would give this movie a deserved 7 out of 10 for some good entertainment, hoping that in the future the Maltese film makers focus more on the plot and the acting rather than on cheap explosions and special effects. After all, they did show that they have some good ideas, it was just their execution that was not good enough. They should take the example of some other foreign low-budget movies.

Nullifyingly Hopeless

[npcs · 1/10 · 6 April 2006]

Completely hopeless. All the way down to the acting. And the Jackie Chan wannabe didn't impress anyone either.

The film's plot was overly exaggerated. It opens with a man who tragically lost his daughter in an operation. Yet the man doesn't swear once. Not very realistic, especially given Malta's standards. And the girl being hung from a 20 storey building is as calm as ever...just hanging there seemingly enjoying the view.

The music of the film was horrendous. Composing music is somewhat an honour these days... yet in this "serious" film you have the name "DJ TOBY" splashed across screen. So much for keeping a straight face. THe whole "gritty" cop action film ends up having a disastrous soundtrack which seems to sound like a cacophony of washing machines working in harmonious disorder.

And don't get me started on the ending - I mean really, the weaponry a police investigator can operate is amazing... he actually knows how to use a rocket launcher. Simply scintillating.

Same goes for the date scene, which somehow zooms out through the other guy's TV. I mean COME ON. There's a limit to how much gibberish we can take.

To Sigcomm: I see you find Angli enthralling.. and you seem to ponder how much better Maltese films will get with bigger budgets.. well let me tell you.. they won't improve.

Angli was seriously hopeless not because it had a low budget, but because the director didn't work around the budget not to mention that the script itself was badly written and bluntly exaggerated.

Exciting and fast paced

[josang · 10/10 · 3 May 2006]

Really enjoyed watching this film. Kept me interested throughout.

Very good fight sequences. Besides Mike Moller who seems to be a professional martial arts man, there were good locals who were in the fight scenes.

Some new faces on the local screens like Roger Mulvaney who gave a very good interpretation, he could become very popular if we see more of him.

Some good effects I specially liked the one when Angli jump out of the balcony just as the bomb explodes.

I hope we see more local films on the same and better level.

A pitiful excuse to earn some money

[imdb-8315 · 1/10 · 23 July 2005]

This must definitely rate as the worst movie I have ever seen. The reason I'm saying this is that the producers didn't get anything right - the colours severely lacked saturation and the contrast was high (also some explosions were in 256 colour, looking as fake as it gets), the acting was awful (the actors lacked passion "sparawli l'ohti!/they shot my sister!" as if nothing happened), the sound was horrible (at several points the sound is not even synchronised with the video, and it has split second sound losses every now and then), the story was broken and the adverts were in-your-face and all over the place.

This movie is supposed to be a thriller, but really it ends up becoming a comedy because it is so awful. It is just a pitiful excuse for some revenue coming from people eagerly awaiting Malta's debut movie.

Hell froze over when this movie hit the theater

[gory_shadows · 1/10 · 5 January 2007]

When I say say that Hell froze over when this movie hit the theater I really mean it. This movie should never have been filmed... but then again, here it is. A shining milestone in Maltese filmography. Not! I could go on at great lengths on how terrible this film actually is but I decided to turn a blind eye on all the lighting and sound defects, the poor special effects and so on. Let the producers take cover behind the old lie that we don't have the equipment... What I am going to comment about is the story, or lack thereof.

What hit me the hardest was that the whole script was completely unoriginal and uninspired. The storyline was nothing more than a regurgitation of ideas borrowed from other films and badly executed to say the least. So okay, the movie was low budget, so why didn't they create a script that used the plot and the acting to push the story along instead of relying so much on the "special-effects" that were mediocre in comparison with what the rest of the world has? Fact is, Malta has good script writers and Malta has good actors but none were used in this film and it is a shame that it is by such a film that we are setting our standards.

Excellent production !!

[sigcomm · 10/10 · 1 December 2005]

Being in a small island with very limited resources financially and also geographically, considering the small budget and the team involved compared to an A class Movie ( feature Film ) this movie can be considered a blockbuster and a milestone in its way.

I encourage this production and also other production companies to do the same effort and hope they will achieve the same results.

Last thing in consideration is if this team had all the blockbuster budgets and equipment what would have been the final result???

Last but not least the foreign stunts added that extra value to this Maltese production which in a way I'm impressed with the casting for this matter always considering that really little money was involved.

Good Entertainment

[bendu · 9/10 · 3 January 2006]

Being a local production I went in to see the film with some trepidation that it might turn out to be like most usual local TV soaps, but must admit the opening scene was quite impressive and so was the exalting music that gave me the same feeling I get when I see the opening of a good film. Okay maybe if they could afford a Gyro mount for the helicopter shot it would have turned out better but if they had money for this then it would not be a low budget movie.

The film has a good pace and every time it starts to slow down you are suddenly hit with an action scene to get you on your toes again. There were some shots that could have been shorter and some adverts that could have been a bit more discrete, but I suppose if it were not for these adverts there would not be a budget to shoot a film locally.

All in all I think it was a good effort and was of a level above what we normally see on the local media. The fight sequences, stunts and explosions gave it that touch that we are used to seeing in foreign action films (nothing out of this world) but for a Maltese production its more that what we are used to. I hope this movie will encourage other producers to make a step in the same direction.

Not bad at all

[acallus · 10/10 · 8 January 2006]

This is the best Maltese production. The level is great for Malta and even though there were things that would be looked down on from Hollywood movies, for the first time Malta can say that they have hit the local cinema, and with success.

The local TV production was also good and may be this is why the film was a success locally. There have been many movies on the same lines but as I stated in Malta I can only think of two more films that his the cinema in such a way.

As stated by other the budget was very low, so the result has to be also put into that light. I think that for the money spend, the movie was great!

For me you are listed in the top 100

[roch_ap · 10/10 · 11 September 2006]

For me you are listed in the top 100,Because both Angli (the tale serial) & Angli the movie are excellent in everything like moves,actions sometimes they joke and that is good so that the film won't be boring and all of the actors know how to act, if i don't see all of the episodes i didn't recognize that it is a film because it is really realistic. Even the tracks (the first & the second tracks )are really cool in the the tale serial, even in Angli the movie.They make you dance. I didn't hear even one negative commet on the tale serial & Angli the movie. Excellent work to all of the crew keep working like that.And good luck for you future.

Good Action!

[znuggs · 10/10 · 3 August 2020]

As far as Maltese films and tv darama are concerned,when it comes to action it's always done away with fast editing or just hearing the Sound effects of action. It's clear that these bold filmmakers wanted to prove that Maltese can choreograph excecute and shoot action ! Wether it be Pyros, Car Stunts or Fight sequences! Thumbs up Chaps !