.357 (2013) Poster

(2013)

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4/10
Low budget actioner fails to impress
freezageeza196617 September 2015
Jade (Laurie Love) survives a murder attempt on her wedding night,by the gang she has run away from.Her husband wasn't so lucky. Pawning her wedding ring for a .357 pistol,she writes the names of the culprits on the bullets in blood and goes hunting.Aiding her in her quest for revenge is Hammer (Fred Williamson),who trains her to become a lean mean fighting machine,and kick some serious ass.

As with most low/no budget movies (or lo-no's as I now call them)I really don't expect anything spectacular.In recent years I have become quite a fan of them because up and coming directors/actors can often bring something new and interesting to the table.Unfortunately,as with many of them,this one falls way short of the mark.

As a revenge flick,it has a simple plot and has quite a lot of action and blood letting (the effects are quite decent).It actually has (in places) a kind of comic book feel to it in it's delivery.

However,with the cast,apart from two of the main characters,everybody else comes across as a bit bland and boring.As a standout,Brian Ames steals the show as a decent villain,and Fred Williamson really doesn't have to do much to look good in any movie.Unfortunately he really doesn't do much of anything at all here,but it's nice to see him being given some screen time.

Laurie Love appears totally mis-cast here.She certainly looked the part but just doesn't for me come across as a decent action heroine.

The action scenes are sadly some of the worst choreographed I've ever seen.The shootouts have the bad guys standing still whilst being shot at,and the fisticuffs are very much "Ok I've hit you now I'll stand here while you hit me" kind of thing.There was no fluidity to the scenes to make them look remotely convincing.

Director Brian Skiba appears to have made a step up recently to TV movies and hopefully with a bigger budget and better cast he can produce better results because,despite the above comments,it's obvious he has a lot of potential.I genuinely wish him good luck with that.

Overall,fans of low budget actioners who aren't bothered about the quality of movie they're watching,will love this one.

I just expected a bit more....
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5/10
I Almost Didn't...
bemyfriend-4018410 August 2022
I almost didn't watch this past the first five minutes. But another unlikely female revenge porn cheapie, turned out to be likable. The background had a Sin City look, and this film was very much in that genre. The girls are beautiful, the martial arts is almost acceptable, and the music is bad. Seen on Tubi, the free streaming site; which now has live TV.
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5/10
BIG STREAMS START OUT AS SMALL RIVERS
nogodnomasters3 August 2018
Warning: Spoilers
Jade (Laurie Love) owes the wrong people money. They kill her new bar tender husband and leave her for dead. She vows revenge and gets help and training from Hammer (Fred "Spearchucker Jones"Williamson) former Viet Nam sniper. After a 10 minute music montage, Jade is a trained killer going after her assailants, each of which has their name painted on a bullet.

This is a low budget grindhouse with some camp value thanks to the inability of Laurie Love to deliver her lines and make us believe she is a fighter. There is no character build-up prior to the killing. It is a simple revenge flick, rather poorly done and with ample nudity, the main attraction to the feature, plus the head and body explosions with blood splatter. Bad guys are into heroin and strip clubs, I think you get the idea.

F-bombs, sex, nudity (Laurie Love, Amari, Gabrielle, Louise Kay, Brittany Madrid, plus others including Windy West-thank you.)
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8/10
This Magnum Opus Will Blow Your Mind!!!
zardoz-1311 April 2022
Warning: Spoilers
Writer & director Brian Skiba's contemporary feminist revenge thriller ".357 Six Bullets for Revenge" suffers from subpar acting on the part of Laurie Love as Jade, the protagonist. Wronged woman that she is, our heroine sets out to slay all six of the dastards who slaughtered her husband Eric and left her for dead. Mind you, Love isn't believable at all playing a deadly dame bent on vengeance. When she recovers sufficiently from her wounds, she tries to kill them. Instead, she almost dies during her first confrontation. Happily, Hammer (Fred Williamson) intervenes on her behalf and saves her shapely butt. Hammer decides to become her mentor, and he trains her how to kill with the help of some friends. She learns how to be proficient with an entire range of weapons, including firearms, knives, swords, martial arts, and explosives. She sells her fake diamond wedding ring for a six-shot .357 revolver that looks more like a frontier Colt .45. Of course, Fred Williamson is comparable to Laurence Olivier in the B-movie epic. He must have had a blast making this shoot'em up. Actually, ".357" channels a Spaghetti western revenge vibe with lots of tough guy characters just begging to be knocked down like tenpins in a bowling alley. Prepare yourself for loads of violence and gunplay. The villains are a lot of unsavory people. The obnoxious South African drug smuggler adds a measure of humor with his outrageous comments. You won't forget what a Rhodesian circumcision constitutes!

Apart from some shoddy performances, this is a thoroughly entertaining epic with lots of slam-bang shootouts. Grim and cynical from fade-in to fade-out, there isn't a bad scene in this fast-paced pastiche of female revenge thrillers. The dialogue is good, too. If you enjoy cheesy movies with trigger-hellions getting their just comeuppance, ".357" is everything you could ever ask for in a B-movie! The villains are no easy knock overs, but she takes them down including their sleazy accomplices. The scene in the bar where she goes to get Pretty Boy is both hilarious as well as violent. The red neck patrons threaten to gang bang her when she storms inside. Nonplussed by their threats, our relentless heroine wades into them with what looks like a MAC-10 machine pistol and stitches them full of lead, before she takes down Pretty Boy. Laugh all you want but this is a worthwhile actioneer worthy of greater critical scrutiny.
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