This is a 2024 movie released on YouTube last November. The backstory and just what this is can be read below:
You know, perhaps Chris Stuckmann should have directed this instead…
Yes, I’m about a year late in discussing this 42 minute “TV Series Proof of Concept” from The Critical Drinker, i.e. Will Jordan. This crowdfunded project is based on a series of novels that Jordan wrote concerning CIA operative Ryan Drake… who is a British dude that works for a secret elite unit nicknamed Shepherds but that’s the least of this film’s problems. My rating has nothing to do with his political beliefs or how I feel about the viewpoints he and his cohorts have. Some of his contemporaries are far more irritating & spout statements far more offensive to many Letterboxd types.
I won’t go in-depth on that aside from noting the one aspect that everyone spotted: what The Critical Drinker rails against in his videos (including Mary Sue characters and cringe-worthy dialogue) is in Rogue Elements and I understand also his novels. Am I supposed to think that The Critical Drinker is a character who shares none of his beliefs with Will Jordan the actor portraying him? I dunno, but of course this makes him look like The Hypocritical Drinker.
The story is potboiler spy stuff; that isn’t automatically a demerit. I’d be down for even a basic DTV film as long as it had some excitement. Rogue Elements, on the other hand… Ryan Drake and some other paper-thin characters… er, I mean Shepherds go to Estonia to rescue an asset, and that’s as deep as the story goes. The dialogue is incredibly generic and unimaginative-I’m not even referring to all the F-bombs and other vulgarities although that didn’t help w/ my enjoyment either.
The story and characters can be blamed on Drinker; the constant use of musical score (which usually wasn’t really needed), the blown-out cinematography in the daytime, the editing that was either jagged or illogical… blame should fall on the director, Travis Grant. He approached Jordan about collaborating on a project; his only experience in the director’s chair are some random shorts-how many even appeared in a space such as a festival is unknown. Grant being in over his head with a $300,000+ project featuring recognizable talent in front and behind the camera that have worked on higher-profile films (even Marvel movies) can’t be confirmed but is a possibility.
The action isn’t astounding yet isn’t disgraceful either so I can’t give Rogue Elements a bottom of the barrel rating. There’s such low-budget pratfalls as bad accents and dodgy acting but I won’t punish the movie for the irony of a movie co-written by The Critical Drinker to feature cliché dialogue and “girl bosses” who defeat mercenary-type adult men in shape (no matter how he may try to justify it)-of course, it’s still quite funny and rather embarrassing for him. Even worse is that one of the two women has an RPG rocket blow up right next to them; instead of becoming vivisected, she’s… knocked off of her feet but is soon ambulatory! The recruitment of a “Russian” so he can speak Russian to a Russian guard at a lair yet the Russians don’t speak Russian to each other—preposterous.
As I didn’t know for a full year how badly this failed in the court of public opinion, the backlash against Rogue Elements likely hasn’t damaged the Critical Drinker empire too badly. Jordan has a new Kickstarter; this project will be a series of short films. As he later publicly lambasted one of the actors in Rogue Elements (the lady who depicted the titular Rogue Element) for struggling with her dialogue, necessitating the reduction of lines-English might not be her first language, you can contemplate if he deserves any of your hard-earned cash if he doesn’t seem all that contrite over the failures of his debut picture and in fact is willing to throw others under the bus.
No matter your political affiliations, Rogue Elements is bad and-worst of all-quite dull.
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