Excellent, Without a doubt!!

Brilliant and touching

It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

SWELTER is a very poor little heist thriller about a group of bank robbers who meet up again years after committing their ultimate crime. The hunt for missing loot brings them back together, but rivalries and vendettas are endemic and the blood begins to flow. Sadly, this is a film which manages to waste the talents of a familiar cast in a story which unsuccessfully mixes family drama, romance, and more showdowns than you can shake a stick at. Jean-Claude Van Damme headlines but is barely in the movie, which mainly follows around sheriff Lennie James as he attempts to keep everybody in check. I love James after seeing him in THE WALKING DEAD but even his talents are wasted here, and you wonder why others like Alfred Molina bothered showing up. A few action scenes aren't enough to make it worth tuning in for.

Although this movie is a modern crime saga, it often plays like a slow-paced old time Western. It's loaded with violence, as you'd expect from a film in this genre, and has some ridiculous plot coincidences and elements, but there was enough intrigue here for me that I wanted to see how it would all play out.Ten years before, as some of the movie is told in flashbacks, 5 cohorts in crime attempt a heist at a Las Vegas casino. Four were captured, but one escaped being wounded and apparently with $10 million. Now, two of the gang members have served their time, one has escaped, and the three are about to pull off a brazen daytime prison break for the fourth from the prison chapel, where 7 guards will be killed.Their plan is to find out where their former cohort is and get their share of the $10 million, and they don't care how many cops or civilians they have to kill to get what they want. Of these four gang members one is Stillman, ably portrayed by Jean-Claude Van Damme, but don't expect his role to be the charismatic leader like in the past, as his role is fairly low key here. The other three are solid in their roles with Grant Bowler, as Cole, standing out in my mind.They get a lead that the fifth member Pike, now named Bishop, and well played by Lennie James, is in the God forsaken desert town of Baker, Nevada. He's now the Sheriff in Baker, but they soon find out he has amnesia, and except for slices of dreams he has about the robbery, has no idea where the money is. Of course, as the gang terrorizes the town to get what they want, it will all end up in bloody violence.I might note here that the terrific actor Alfred Molina adds much needed comic relief in the film as Doc, the only physician in Baker.In summary, this movie, written and directed by Keith Parmer, offered just enough to keep my interest, but don't expect a fast paced crime thriller.

Spotting this movie at my local video store, I thought, "Well, if it has Jean-Claude Van Damme in the cast, there must be at least a decent amount of action in it." Imagine my surprise upon watching the movie when I saw that Van Damme doesn't have a great deal of screen time. Not only that, he doesn't do any martial arts in the movie. In fact, the movie really can't be called an action movie at all - there's very little stuff like gunplay and man to man fights in the finished product.Still, despite the movie's false advertising, I was willing to accept the movie being more of a drama, as long as it was well done. Unfortunately, "Swelter" is not a well done movie. The biggest problem is that it is incredibly SLOW. For example, it takes more than an HOUR of the total running time before the central protagonist finds himself in trouble. And the movie isn't terribly interesting up to that point or beyond that point. There are additional problems as well. The movie obviously had a limited budget. While the finished product doesn't look extremely cheap and tacky, there are signs of restraint, like the constant shooting of actors close to the camera (there are few "wide" shots in the movie.) Also, the script is not only slow, there are a number of unanswered questions like how someone with amnesia could be elected sheriff, or how the hero got away with the money with a bullet in his head all those years ago.While this is far from the worst movie I've ever seen, in the end it will likely be a letdown to anyone who watches it, whether they are expecting an action movie or a hard-boiled drama.

Having seen the trailer, I gave this film a shot. In the beginning, I wasn't disappointed. The first few scenes were quite good, obviously imitating the cool atmosphere of films by Tarantino and Rodriguez. This lasted only for the first 10 minutes though.The rest of the film dragged on to include family drama, ridiculous array of stand-offs and completely illogical character decisions. The actors could have probably managed a more believable performance, since the cast was decent, but they had nothing to work with. The initially cool and skilled outlaws break down into randomly psychotic, calm, honourable, greedy, sadistic or thoughtful, at the drop of a hat, from one scene to another.I cannot recommend this film. It is a forgettable mess, which after the first few scenes, didn't even seem to try to be anything else.