REVIEW COMING SOON
UK/Spain Co-Production
Release Date: 10 July 2009 (DVD Premiere)
Director: Daniel Benmayor (Tracers)
Cast: Brendan Mackey, Jennifer Matter, Patrick Regis, Neil Maskell, Iaione Perez, Anna Casas, Peter Vives and Claudia Bassols
Writer: Mario Schoendorff
Trailer:PAINTBALL
review below by Joe Pesci II
WHAT HAVE I SEEN THAT ACTOR IN BEFORE?
- Brendan Mackey: Fated, Touching The Void
- Jennifer Matter: Stalker (2011), Dead Cert
- Patrick Regis: Rise Of The Footsoldier, Life and Lyrics, Rollin With The Nines
- Neil Maskell: Level Up, Bone In The Throat, High-Rise, Humans (TV), Open Windows, Hyena, Utopia (TV), The Rise, Dates (TV), All Things To All Men, Pusher (2012), St. George’s Day, Piggy, Wild Bill (2012), The ABCs of Death, Kill List, Turnout, Ghosted, Bonded By Blood, How To Stop Being a Loser, The Shouting Men, Tony, Jack Falls, Doghouse, Rise Of The Footsoldier, It’s All Gone Pete Tong, The Football Factory, Nil By Mouth
- Claudia Bassols: One In The Chamber, The Eagle Path
RISE OF THE ZOMBIE HOOLIGAN FILMS 
PAINTBALL – review by SPLATT USHER aka joe pesci ii
Stop me if you’ve encountered this one before. A bunch of strangers are recruited to play a game known as ‘paintball’ only to discover that some sinister force is using them as pawns in an even deadlier game. In short, a game has become a matter of kill or be killed. Now there is, of course, nothing wrong with taking an established and successful idea and having another go at it. But does PAINTBALL deliver? Not really.
We meet eight hooded individuals in the back of a truck as they are taken to a secret destination. It seems to be a very intense matter, and our protagonists are assigned their jobs with the sort of serious sense of purpose usually reserved for presidents and suicide bombers. Unfortunately, this is so rushed that it is almost impossible to actually take notice of who is meant to be who. This problem is compounded by there being only a couple of familiar Britpic faces involved. But one of those faces belongs to Britpic favourite Neil Maskell. But what’s this? He opens his mouth to speak and there emerges some strange American sounding accent. I honestly cannot comment on whether it is a good accent or not because it just seems to be a crime against nature. Fortunately, dialogue is not the film’s strong point.
Within moments of meeting, our adrenalin-junkies (that’s how they’re described on the DVD blurb) are thrust from the vehicle and into the hostile terrain of the paintballing world. Now, it may not surprise you to learn that I have not paintballed, but is it really this dangerous and dogged? Out they leap, under heavy paintfire from unseen assailants, surely more savage than real-life soldiers. And they do seem to be taking this matter very seriously. But oh no! One of them has just got killed. And not by pesky paint. Suddenly the ludicrously serious game has taken on a mega-surge of being even more serious as our now seven paintballing freaks run for their lives.
As you might have expected, they soon get whittled down in numbers. Alliances form, characters go off on there own, the power switches, all that sort of stuff happens. But mostly everyone just runs about, hoping not to get killed by the unseen assailant who seems to have actual weapons instead of paint. Then there’s some business about flags. Apparently what matters in this paintball game is reaching flags and finding prizes. Well, turns out the prizes are violent weapons! Yay! So our heroes fight back, but just end up killing some innocent paintballers instead. Boo! But they are foreign paintballers, probably Polish, so that’s OK as far as the film’s concerned. Questions did occasionally idly loiter in my mind. Like: why don’t they all sit down and have a bit of a think and a chat? And: how much damage do paintballs actually do? And: why are they still behaving as if their paintball guns are deadly weapons?
Then we find out who’s behind it all. It will come as no surprise to learn that there’s a consortium of rich perverts hidden in a secret hide-out, and that they’ve given someone a big gun to go around and kill all the paintballers. Yes, it’s all a game to them, the very same evil billionaire voyeurs who no doubt were the money behind the similar activities in THE TOURNAMENT, DEMONS NEVER DIE and FREERUNNER, and probably loads of others. When will they learn that having loads of money does not entitle them to make a game out of murder? Evidently, never. Clearly these films are a comment on the way that those lower down on the social scale forever have to dance to the tune of the rich. No matter, this time round the evil billionaire voyeurs are paying to see two teams of paintballers being picked off by an evil unseen slow-moving killer, which doesn’t really make much sense.
The film-makers have chosen to make the film as breathlessly visceral as they could. This means that there’s lots of shaky camerawork, lots of running about, little sense of who is who or where, and a script which may be summarised by the following two sample lines:
‘F***! S***!’
‘S***! F***!’
These are repeated ad nauseum (mind you, the script appears to be by some sort of lazy foreigner so what do you expect?). But then again, these are the words one might well find oneself saying when running around a park whilst being chased by a relentlessly sadistic killer and with only watercolours to defend yourself with. This minimalist (though not minimal) dialogue (honestly I think they had ‘f*** s***!’ on a loop) fails to pick out any nuances in characterisation, and therefore the actors struggle to do anything interesting other than run about. There’s tetchy American Neil Maskell, and Patrick Regis as token black guy seems a decent sort, and we know that Iaione Perez is a lesbian because she is very small , sweary and angry. And then there’s the bit where she strips to her bra. Not absolutely sure why as no-one else does. And there’s Jennifer Matter (from STALKER!) as someone who may or may not be Russian. And then there’s the deeply dubious leader of the team, whose approach to teambuilding is similar to the approach taken by SOLOMON KANE.
Did I guess who would be standing at the end? No. Does it matter? No. Is PAINTBALL any good? Not really, we’ve all seen this sort of thing done on numerous occasions, and there’s not much to make this one stand out. It does have a novel way of getting gruesome killings on screen without spending too much on them (and I suppose that explains the surely mistaken 15 certificate). This is a perfectly adequate ‘let’s kill the cast off one by one’ adventure if you like that sort of thing and have nothing better to do. But, honestly, cleaning the cooker is a much more entertaining activity.