Dreadfully Boring

It is interesting even when nothing much happens, which is for most of its 3-hour running time. Read full review

Amazing worth wacthing. So good. Biased but well made with many good points.

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.

There's a moment at the beginning of this movie that is sublimely silly. A guy with a mop top hair cut and a Grizzly Adams' beard rides his bicycle through the forest, silently killing zombies with a pair a hatchets and a homemade javelin while speaking to his dead father in voice-over narration. If The Vanguard had been that defiantly peculiar all the way through, I think I would have really enjoyed it. Sadly, the film collapses in on itself after that interestingly odd beginning and turns into a very cheap, very lame and very badly written rip off of The Omega Man. Yeah, that's right. I can't give writer/director Matthew Hope the credit to say he's done an homage to the original book written by Richard Matheson, the first film version starring Vincent Price or the third adaptation starring Will Smith. No, this thing can only be fairly linked to the schlocky 70s version of I Am Legend starring Charlton Heston, with just a pinch of theft from 28 Days Later for seasoning.As you might guess, this is a zombie picture. In this case, the zombies aren't actually dead. They're humans infected by an evil corporation that took over the world when society collapsed after all the oil ran out, which according to this movie happens in about 5 years. So, I guess we all should start ordering those "survival seeds" advertised on the Glenn Beck Show. Anyway, the infected humans are called Biosyns, have an awful case of varicose veins all over their bodies and act like ticked off orangutans.In this derivative zombie apocalypse world, we meet Max (Ray Bullock Jr.). He's the aforementioned mop top Grizzly Adams. Max's life seems to consist of wandering around the forest killing zombies, sleeping in a tent surrounded by a crude wooden fence that wouldn't keep out a three year old child, whining via voice-over narration to his dead dad about sundry things and waiting around for a guy named Hareem Jabbar. Max eventually runs into Jamal (Shiv Grewal), an Arab/Indonesian-looking guy that's a solider for the evil corporation who has apparently gone rogue. I say "apparently" because why, how and from what Jamal has gone rogue is never all that clear.Max and Jamal team up like this is a buddy cop movie and then encounter Zac and Rachel (Steve Weston and Emma Choy), a soldier and a scientist who are fugitives from the evil corporation. How these four end up together is like something out of a Three Stooges' short. They proceed to wander around the forest and engage in some enormously feeble attempts at serious drama. It's hard to get into any more details than that because, frankly, the last half of this movie doesn't make a whole lot of sense. The characters spout dialog that's almost gibberish and do things that serve no logical or reasonable purpose. Long after my interest was exhausted, some supposed secrets were revealed, some people died and it ends with a line of dialog that includes the name of the film, as in "Oh, that's why they called it The Vanguard".The acting in this isn't all that bad, though there are a few moments where the performers seem to think that showing emotion and random facial twitching are the same thing. The direction is essentially competent, though it appears that 90% of the instructions writer/director Hope gave the cast consisted of "Run over here! Now run over there!" The Vanguard is also a pretty cheap-looking movie, though the soundtrack is quite effective at setting the mood of the story.The overwhelmingly execrable execution of that story, however, puts a stink on this film all the tomato juice in the world couldn't wash out. There were parts where I genuinely wondered how a human being could have written something like this, with scenes that look, sound and feel more like they were coughed up by a faulty screen writing app for somebody's iPhone.The kindest comment I can make about The Vanguard is that a cast and crew with some talent tried to make a movie with very little money and a truly horrible script. They failed to produce anything watchable but they didn't leave me angry at completely wasting my time.

Once you read the other comments on this film you quickly figure out that people seem to either love or hate this movie. Which I believe would probably classify this movie as a success in the directors eyes with that alone.First this is not really a zombie movie (or infected for the purists) in the normal sense of the genre (they are only a minor part of the story) so if that's what you're looking for you may want to keep looking.This was a refreshingly new and fairly unique storyline for a movie within the zombie/infected genre. Typically a movie in this category can only keep your interest with gore or suspense, however with this film it was the story itself that keeps you watching.If you're hoping for a big budget 28 Days/weeks later, or George Romero type of movie with tonnes of Gore and a refined script.... then you may want to re-watch those.But if you enjoy a low budget movie with a decent script where all people involved with the project genuinely tried their best to make it work I would definitely recommend this.

In the course of a year I watch app. 600-700 movies - and compared to most movies "The Vanguard" sucks big time. I really struggled to find a reason for why this movie was even made. I really wish all movie directors would spend more time thinking about what they want to say with their movies - instead of just collecting 90 minutes of worthless film and call it a movie.There's no plot - and the settings/scenery are unconvincing and the actors should really consider a career change, maybe somewhere in the fastfood or cleaning business - as they have no talent for anything, as this foul crap of a movie clearly shows.

Please take the camera away from whoever got the chance to play with it and bury it deep, then take the film and burn it. This ill-conceived post-apocalyptic horror (and I write this with a feeling not unlike profound terminal toothache that someone may equate this with any decent film of these genres) has but one thing going for it - the chance to walk away and watch no longer. In a masochistic moment I managed to stay the course - in the belief that either a gut-wrenching funny or scary moment would occur. There are no scary, suspenseful scenes. This film gets one star for a few comedy horror moments but all the walking about in the woods in between isn't worth the wait.I would have preferred the zombies to win - at least they were trying to make it interesting.The musical score isn't to my taste but was the best of a really bad film.