Review for Assault On Wall Street

Directed by Uwe Boll.

This is all I need to write really. He is a man who is often cited when you consider the worst directors and really when you look at his career it is a reputation well deserved. He has been nominated for five Razzies winning the Worst Career Achievement in 2009 as 'Germany's answer to Ed Wood'. His films are usually brought up when you talk about the worst of all time, especially from the past decade or so. Uwe Boll is someone who it seems cannot make a great film and yet somehow continues to make them? So you can understand why I had my worries going into this film.

Jim is a security guard who after the economy collapse has been left penniless. His wife is currently suffering from Cancer and they are now struggling to pay for her treatment. It seems that everything that could go wrong, is going wrong until after one final tragedy he just cannot take it anymore. Filled with anger he decides to take revenge on the financial institutions that let his family down.

Assault on Wall Street does not feel like an Uwe Boll film and most of the time I was thinking that maybe this was another guy. That is not to say that this film is perfect, it's not by any means, but compared to something like Alone in the Dark or Bloodrayne, this is a massive improvement. Remember this is a guy who made a sex scene with Kristanna Loken almost unwatchable!

This is not the technical incompetence of the likes of Alone in the Dark or House of the Dead, or the sheer awful writing of Postal that Uwe Boll was known for, but instead a surprisingly competent revenge film. My only real issue is that the film just drips with tropes and cliches. This is all mainly the fault of Uwe Boll's script which feels so hamfisted at times and tries too hard to be like the superior Falling Down. However, anyone and everyone who got screwed over by the economic collapse of 2008 will relate to this story and probably wish they could have done the same. Though they would need a convenient machine gun which they were allowed to keep when they left the army??

The cast of this film is insane and when you see who is in it you can understand where most of the $5million budget went. Dominic Purcell, Edward Furlong, Keith David, Clint Howard, Erin Karpluk, John Heard and Eric Roberts. That's not to say that everyone is putting on award winning performances, but the main performance by Purcell is pretty solid and I must say Eric Roberts as a slimy lawyer and Clint Howard as a crazy gun salesman are great highlights in this film. I do wish more was given to Keith David, who is always awesome, but he was great in the scenes he appeared.

There are no extras, which is a little surprising as this is probably one of the few Uwe Boll films that has not been torn apart by most critics. This is probably the only Uwe Boll films where I wouldn't have minded sitting through a 'Making of' or a Commentary, but sadly nothing is given. This is a shame.

Assault on Wall Street is not a perfect film, but compared to Uwe Boll's other works, this is a masterpiece. I do hope that this is him finally figuring out how to create an entertaining film. Though I wouldn't say this is a film that I would watch again, I do not regret watching it. For an Uwe Boll film, that is a miracle!