Don't listen to the Hype. It's awful

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Lets start with the good, the acting was good, and it does give a tiny glimpse into group dynamic's and how that can relate to individual's losing their grip on their own ethic's. Now let's look at the bad, it doesn't do much else, this movie is little more than a soft core snuff film, I wish I could go back in time and do something more entertaining than watch this movie, like for example watch paint dry. I know that is a bit extreme but, as you watch the situation unfold, you come to notice some little problems, like where are the guard's, no prison or jail lock's multiple inmates together in a confined area (and I'm talking about confined in prison terms) for twenty three hours a day and doesn't check on them. The only reason I give it a 2 instead of a 1 is that the actor's did a lot with the less than great script, and horribly thought out premise, I hope that you find this helpful.

I don't really get all the Uwe Boll bashers out there. I don't watch his video game films because, quite frankly, I think if you want to have a video game experience you should PLAY a video game. Call me crazy.I watched "Stoic" because I loved "Rampage"---I loved the originality of it, I admired it's clarity of vision, and I liked the outlandishness of the piece. Boll's "I-don't-give-a-f***" attitude definitely did show through in that hyper-violent orgasm and it does so again with "Stoic."What's odd about "Stoic" is that it would almost play better as a stage production. It's based on a real event that occurred in a German prison, where a harmless dare escalated into deadly consequence. It's really pretty simple, as Sam Levinson states in the preamble: "This system doesn't work!" And why should it? You put four guys in one small room, with varying degrees of maladaptive personalities, subject them to endless tedium and little activity---what do you think would happen? There is a reason why most US prisons don't do four-to-a-cell, after all.The acting is very good for the most part (Levinson gets a bit melodramatic, but it's passable). Furlong is creepily chilling in his passive-aggressiveness. It's not the type of movie that generates a lot of tension (probably why few people like it). It does generate DREAD however and it isn't pleasant to watch even in a sicko-torture-porn type of way...there are no "oh wow" EFX...it's just...degrading. Would I watch it again? Probably not. Would I recommend it to my parents? Hell no.Yet, I find myself giving it a relatively high-score. For those interested in how group dynamics tend to obliterate the ability or desire to think for one's self, "Stoic" is an relatively bold statement. One wonders if Boll was thinking of his rubber-stamping detractors when he made it.

I am struggling to understand any of these positive reviews. First off, I have not seen any of 'Uwe Boll' other offerings so I am not judging the film by his previous work, solely on this pointlessly brutal, savage unrelenting 82 minutes of film. I can usually watch films no matter of their content, however I did need to fast forward at least half of Stoic. Stil, some of the images of the film still haunt me! I fast forwarded hoping (somewhat naively) for a happy ending. I could quite happily of lived my entire life without watching this film. I really am confused as to why people would merit this, chiefly due to the 'shock factor'. I would estimate that 95% of the people who have watched and enjoyed this film are on some sort of register, and if they have kids social services will most definitely be keeping a close eye on them. In short, if you watched and enjoyed this film, you're probably a pervert; a violent, weird, pervert.

To start, this is most definitely not a film that you'd sit and watch for fun. That said, this is by far cult director Uwe Boll's most accomplished and mature work thus far, albeit a film that many will find hard to stomach.Based on a shocking incident which occurred in a German jail in 2006, Boll uses the premise as an opportunity to launch a searing polemic against a system which locks men up like caged animals for 23 hours per day with nothing to do, in the name of punishment and then is somehow surprised and outraged when these men behave more like animals than human beings.We get to watch, helpless as Mitch (Sipos, absolutely superb here), a quiet young man imprisoned for a petty criminal offence is bullied, brutalised, tortured and cruelly degraded as a human being over a period of 18 hours (or so) by his three cell-mates who began the day as his friends. A series of events that is set in motion by an ill-advised poker bet with a sprinkling of swaggering bravado soon gets way out of hand and swiftly descends into an insane pack-mentality, survival-of-the-fittest situation that cannot be stopped, simply because it has already gone too far. As you might imagine, this does not end happily.Filmed on a shoestring budget in a grand total of two locations with almost all of the dialogue being improvised by almost-unrecognisable-from-his-T2-days Edward Furlong, the excellent (and probably destined for much bigger things) Sam Levinson, Steffen Mennekes (who gives a memorable turn as the mentally-unstable German skinhead, Jack) and the aforementioned Shaun Sipos, Stoic takes the audience on a raw, intense, brutal and emotionally-draining journey into the pitch-black heart of the human condition and graphically portrays the most base, animalistic aspects of Man's nature as they explosively erupt to the surface, as they tend to when people freed from all concepts of personal responsibility.Stoic contains graphic violence and scenes of a disturbing and upsetting nature, however I must credit Dr. Boll for his restraint and sensitivity towards the subject matter here. It would've been all too easy to film Stoic as some sort of tacky exploitation/torture porn flick, using Mitch's suffering as entertainment for a horror audience. Instead, he gave us something entirely different - something that leaves the audience completely drained, numb with shock at the end and with little option but to sit and contemplate the events just witnessed (think Gaspar Noé's Irréversible or Takashi Miike's Audition for the effect I'm talking about). For that, I salute him.If Uwe Boll is ever going to win an award (a good award, not a Razzie) for one of his movies, this will be the one.