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★
Directed by: #MattRafferty #CarlosHaney
Written by: #MattRafferty
Starring: #ArtDuarte #BlueMcDonnell #GaryHead
Indie Film Review by #ChrisBuick
Johnny (Art Duarte) is out for justice against the mobsters that have raped his sister (Blue McDonnell), storming his way into their strongholds and shooting down anyone that stands in his way, while also seeking revenge against head honcho (Gary Head) for the murder of his father who was killed right in front of him at a young age.
Well where to start? On paper, it all sounds like a simple yet promising premise, but it is one that One Bad Mice struggles to hold onto and really doesn’t to be honest. Of its ninety-plus minute runtime, arguably about fifteen or twenty of those is actually dedicated to moving the story forward, with the rest of the film being stuffed with completely nonsensical throwaway scenes including a monologue about the similarities of women to cheese, a theory about how men can't be blamed for infidelity when drunk, and best of all, a woman dancing with a wrench while a fight takes place around her. All this makes that hour and a half seem like days.
Any action to get excited about seems to have been lifted from a Three Stooges sketch or an episode of Scooby Doo, as Johnny monotonously moves from location to location thwarting the horrendously stupid villains that follow him by literally pulling rugs from under them, running around trees and leaving notes for the bad guys to find (seriously, where does he keep getting all the paper?)
The films overall aesthetic which despite being shot in 2009, looks like a Hallmark Channel movie from the 90s but while that can be forgiven, unfortunately, there are a multitude of sins here which cannot be. Poor editing randomly cuts away to a wall or trouser leg during dialogue, which itself is cringeworthy and almost always accompanied by a single-track soundtrack being relentlessly overused throughout.
It's hard to pick out an MVP in a cast that offers so little. Johnny's sister seems completely relaxed with having just recently been sexually assaulted, rather seeming more interested in Johnny finding himself a good woman, in fact all the women in the film seem solely obsessed with how much sex they are having or which man they may want to have said sex with. Johnny himself is such a typical non-descript tough guy, mob boss Eddie can't speak without moving his hands and no one else makes any sort of impact so in the end the star might actually be the parrot with the dubbed lines. Or the cheese monologue guy.
Infuriatingly awful, not even managing to be bad in any funny or charming way, nor with its tongue firmly in its cheek. One Bad Mice, besides being a severe grammatical error, is like something straight from the Tommy Wiseau school of filmmaking and a dreadful attempt at a slick revenge film, instead just a horrible, sludgy mess.
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