I have sworn before times and times not to go to any Arabic or Indian movie. It’s just not my taste. Couple of weeks back however, I got an email from a friend with a link for an upcoming Kuwaiti movie in cinema called “One More Chance”, aka OMC. When I asked, he told me he was the producer of the film. Knowing how smart and multi-talented he is made me pause and have a second thought. First I was shocked as this production business came out of nowhere, and second I was considering for the first time going to a Kuwaiti movie. So I read the synopsis saying “Meshaal, the investigation officer, investigates the murder of his best friend Alaa the programmer. “One More Chance” is a Kuwaiti action comedy movie.” This is when I decided, it’s time to break my vows, and that I did.

 

OMC is an action-comedy short 1-hour movie  that turned out to be fun, and brings new ideas and ways of thinking to the Kuwaiti movie industry I believe. It brings a promise of possible good things to come. The beginning of the movie, the intro, is one thing that will raise expectations so high it was the best part of the movie. It was done Hollywood FBI or hacking movie styles, something I have never seen done before in Kuwait. The remain of the movie however goes below the intro level, and the way the story was quickly wrapped up and ended will leave you in disappointment after the strong intro scene.

 

Comic scenes were partly fun, though actors could do better as comedians in action movies. You get the feeling sometimes they are hesitating to tell the joke or something. There is one scene however I bet most people would blast at as we did. Action scenes were sadly the worst. They are Indian styles, and poorly directed Indian styles. Shooting scenes were never also fully completed. Bullet is fired, but you can only try to guess where it went. I will get to why is that in a minute. Camera angles were in many occassions wisely chosen, unlike regular stuff we see in Kuwait which is just Point & Shoot. Also, some environment shots help give the viewer a feeling of the environment, which is another thing overlooked usually. Transition between the scenes is not managed professionally I have to say, as you can tell when a cut and new shot was made pretty easily. Music was in some scenes classic and quite out of focus, irrelated to the scene.

 

The character of the investigator was completely missing as my friend called it. You can’t tell if he is top-detective, comedian, lame, or anything else. There is just no single character for him.

 

One thing that was pretty smart is the trick or puzzle if you wanna call it at the beginning of the movie that was resolved at the end. This type of mystery and puzzle solving, though not very complicated, is something we don’t see in Kuwait. Everything is pretty straight forward, you are never surprised or shocked at some point. This movie gave you the Aha! moment at the end.

 

Another thing I liked about the movie is how they didn’t include any hot girls to attract audience. Instead, they tried to depend on the story and movie content itself. I pretty much hate the over-use of girls as the main purpose of the movie. Love is not everything. You can do a great movie without it. 12 Angry Men should be a perfect example right? Also, no girls most likely means to censored scenes ;)

 

Actors:

Not being a high budget meant deending on so many new and amature faces, trying movie thing for the first time. Some have shown promises, others need a lot more to work on. For me, Bin Salem was the best actor in the movie. What do you think?

 

What this movie Isn’t:

I agreed to go to the movie with the promise I will get an hour or two with the producer to hammer him with my review. He genuily accepted it, and that I did. I gave him the long list, chatted about the movie production and his role in it. Once you know the full details, you should know not to raise your expectations so high of the movie. First, the movie was never intended to be a real movie, but rather a short testimonial and rehearsal one instead as a proof of concept, and it was shot with very low budget, and used many voluntairly efforts. Heck the whole movie was shot using one single camera! Thus, some incompleted action scenes were overlooked. You can’t ask for much when you’re not giving anything right? This is why some bullets scenes are missing!

 

The fact that the movie got good impressions and motivation persuaded them to push it to the big screen. It was too late to go back and finish the incompleted scenes however. It was basically tough luck, so don’t go to the movie expecting a full real movie, but rather a short one that might be fun, and shows you a potential attempt, and a promise of possible good things to come.

 

As a matter of fact the producer was saying “Bashar, I am glad you are reviewing it as a movie. This was made for us as a practice only, and if there is going to be next movie it will definitely be much better prepared for”. 

 

Another thing is, I highly doubt this movie will suit females. It seems like a pure male targeted one. Action, and IT.

 

 

Geeky Takes [WARNING: SPOILERS! SPOILERS! SPOILERS!]:

Being an IT person the producer said you have to see it. I did, but that comes at a cost. I will expect high IT stuff from it, just like AntiTrust. So here goes the list of Geeky Takes

 

  • Intro movie was, again, great and gave feeling of IT upcoming events.
  • Spyware Definition: First of all, Spyware is not so much a techy catchy thing to show off with. If you wanna show off with techy stuff, pick a more deep topic. Second and most importantly, the definition was wrong or at least incomplete. Spyware is a software that normally installs without the user awareness, that’s right. But most importantly, a spyware is a software that collects information about your computer usage and transmits it to other parties without your approval, which was missing from the definition.
  • What is the program about? They say it’s program for secure communication between police and investigators, however that does not make it a Spyware right? Apparently, no one really knows what the program really does.
  • The programmer, Alaa, used Mac to program a client based app, which was later ran on Windows laptops. While you could argue Mac was running dual boot systems, that thing was apparently not accounted for.
  • The programmer Alaa was too much decent looking, his desk was completely clean from any papers. No empty pepsi cans, no cold pizzas lying around. It just didn’t give the feeling of hard-core geek.
  • No single command line shown! Boo-Hoo!
  • The program did not give the feeling of being a security communication program, and it seemed to look different from begin than from the end of the movie.
  • Programmers don’t use mouse! At least not so often.
  • The identity program was kinda neat one, how it scans through identities to find the right person.
  • When the gang steals the program, they do the old Delete Files trick rather than steal the laptop with it’s source code, or at least shoot the MacBook to death. Apparently, no one was welling to sacrifice his MacBook for the sake of the movie. I wouldn’t :)
While the above list might seem a bit rough, I wrote every single point with the hope it will help enhanced future productions, and I really wish them all the best luck.
[END OF SPOILERS!]

Give them your feedback
The movie producer was really open and encouraging to all sorts of feedback he could get. So please, let him have it. Give it to him here in the comments. If you haven’t seen the movie yet, it’s still shown in cinemas for one more week. You still have One More Chance!

 

 

Movie Site: http://www.abdalmovies.com

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