DEAD ON TIME (2018)

DEAD ON TIME (2018)

(Action, Drama) [TV-MA]

In this one, Moshin Dewar (played by Mohamed Zouaoui), drops out of a plane in the Middle East during an escape. He’s got a case with contents that are extremely valuable and seems to be wanted by just about everyone in this freakin movie. The main agency after this case is an agency named ‘Black Halo’. The only problem is now Anwar the Butcher (played by Benbadra Afif), now holding Moshin for trespassing on his land. Mike McGuirk (played by Michael Madsen) who is an operative for ‘Black Halo’, wants Moshin Dewar brought to him alive, so that means we don’t want dudes just going in killing everything.  Tom Bruise (played by John Sjogren, is the first of two groups going to secure Moshin and the device. Along the way, Bruise discovers there is something very unique about Moshin (and his device) and does everything he can to save him from increasingly more and more intense situations after finding out he’s been double-crossed.

Let me first say that this is a low budget effort that during its running time starts to feel like some of the pieces are missing. In fact, by the end of the movie, it feels like the whole thing was made to set up a much larger universe. While this is all well and good, as viewers we kind of need this thing to be a little more coherent on its own. Effects wise this thing is pretty weak, so go into it expecting that. You may recognize Mike Madsen’s name, he was Budd from KILL BILL: VOL . I. While he is in the movie, his character doesn’t drive the narrative. All of the heavy lifting is handled by John Sjogren who is pretty amazing in this. Mohamed Zouaoui is good in this, but I think Moshin as a character is more annoying than likable. 

This movie plays more like a post-Iraq War flick than anything else, but with the humor and light hints of sci-fi thrown in, we get a lot of really fun moments. There is one scene where Tom Bruise and Moshin are talking in the car and Tom is trying to explain to him about all the stuff American’s need to worry about. His diatribe on this subject is about 2 or 3 minutes of comedic excellence. It’s maybe one of the best comedic scenes in a B-movie ever. It’s a shame in some ways that there weren’t more scenes like this in the movie. It should also be noted that director Rish Mustaine does a pretty good job with the action shots, but the dialog scenes feel a little wonky at times. Too many camera angle switches.

Walking into this I expected bad acting, bad effects, and a fairly disjointed plot, and we get a dose of all of that, but this movie is pretty enjoyable and I do wonder what they will do next. I do hope they improve the CGI on some of the robot sequences because those scenes are rough as hell as is. Yes, there is a freakin robot in this movie. 

I give DEAD ON TIME a 3 out of 7. In this case, eliminating the robot element and saving it for later, might have brought this up to a 4 out of 7.
 

GRAPHICS ARE THE PROPERTY OF CALLING ALL DESTROYERS AND ARE USED FOR REVIEW PURPOSES ONLY. 

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