We get sent a lot of indie movies, and a lot of the time, they are interesting, creative and just ‘not Hollywood’. Then we get sent stuff like The Shepherd Code: Road Back, and I lose all my faith in indie movies a little.
I wasn’t going to review this movie, but I had an email about a review, and it’s now 6:30 am, and I can’t sleep. I’ve got nothing else to do at this point, so here goes.
The Shepherd Code is a sequel to the first movie. It stars
Alan Delabie, Michael McKell, Don ‘The Dragon’ Wilson, Jeff Langton, Shaina West, Michael Morris, Mark Strange, Jo Price and Lee Arenberg. Delabie writes, and co-directs with Morris.
The Story
The story is thin, very thin; in fact, the story is thinner than my patience.
Alex Lapierre was once a professional assassin. He now leads a peaceful existence, far removed from his tumultuous past. However, the past never stays buried for long.
I guess this is what happens, honestly, it was hard to follow, maybe because I haven’t seen the first movie. This meant I really didn’t know who was who or what was what. Honestly, it’s hard to break down the story or what was going on.
The best way to describe it is that most of the people here remember to stand on their marks and say their lines. There are a couple of fight scenes, and then it ends.
The Cast
I like to give indie movies a little leeway with my reviews. They don’t have big budgets or the best special effects, but they put their heart and soul into them. Friend of the LMO, Nate Shepka, is a great example; he makes a really solid movie.
The Shepherd Code is not in the same league as someone like Nate. It’s not in the same game as anything from Hollywood, and I include Disney in that.
From the opening scene in the movie, the acting is awful, and I mean The Room-level bad. As I said, most of the people here are in the movie because they can do their lines without reading them off the page.
There isn’t a good performance in this at all, it was like they were all trying to out do each other, well, out badly act each other.
You know how on social media, you see 15-year-old lads, trying to act hard, like ‘gangstas’? It’s the same here, but with men in their 40s. Everyone has a ‘swagger’ where they have to swing their shoulders to look ‘hard’ and walk like they have rickets.
Niche Market
Going through the cast of The Shepherd Code, I see they all work together a lot. Road Back is a sequel to an original movie, which I said I’ve never heard of. I’ve no idea where they are getting their money from. Who’s investing in these movies? I want to think they are getting the money from real gangsters, and soon, they will have to pay back the money. Now that’s a movie I would watch!
Fair play, if they have a loyal following, good for them, but I’m not one of them; even I have standards. If this is your kind of thing, then you have fun with it.
I imagine that, with a movie like The Shepherd Code: Road Back, the premiere is held in a local pub. All of the wives of the cast all sit there, ‘watching’ the movie, while on their phones. As the credits roll, they all turn to their proud husbands and say:
“Well done, honey, you did very well!”
In that patronising, ‘I wasn’t really paying attention’ way that I get from my wife all the time.
Overall
The Shepherd Code is like an Ed Wood movie; there’s a lot of passion, but not much talent. I honestly appreciate the effort that everyone has put in, but it just doesn’t show on the screen.
It’s little things, like production. Coming back to Nate’s movies, he produces them so they look like ‘film’. The Shepherd Code was shot on digital cameras, most likely phones, and then there is zero post-production. They LOOK like it was shot on a cheap camera, and they just left it.
The travel is good, I mean, they go to Miami, London, and Portugal. I see what was going on here; write a ‘script’ that has exotic locations, then say they are ‘integral to the plot’. If I wrote a movie, I would have it about a man getting over his fear of exotic Asian ladies. He does this by visiting every brothel in Indonesia.
You might be a fan of Delabie’s work, but I am not. I hope he never reads this review, but, as we’ve always said, we’ll be honest. This might mean I could be tracked down and beaten up, but I’ll take my chances!
The Shepherd Code: Road Back is now in cinemas, very select cinemas, I imagine. If you have seen and enjoyed the original movie, I guess you might like this one. I have no intention of watching the original Shepherd Code, or any of the other sequels lined up.
Well, this will teach me. I’ve only just seen the trailer. Mental Note: Watch the trailer before asking for a screener in the future. Come on, Phil, this is basic stuff!
