All Hat

2007
All Hat
5.1| 1h29m| en| More Info
Released: 11 September 2007 Released
Producted By: New Real Films
Country:
Budget: 0
Revenue: 0
Official Website: http://allhatthemovie.com/
Synopsis

An ex-con returns to his rural Ontario roots and outwits a corrupt and wealthy thoroughbred owner trying to take over a slew of local farms. Ray Dokes, a charming ex-ballplayer, returns from jail to discover the rural landscape of his childhood transformed by urban development. Determined to stay out of trouble, Ray heads to the farm of his old friend Pete Culpepper, a crusty Texas cowboy who trains losing racehorses and whose debts are growing faster than his corn.

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Nordhammer88 Keith Carradine and Ernie Hudson are great and perfect for their roles . Nice story set in Canadian early Autumn . A laid back movie with a great ending that you will never tire of watching ; especially if you are a horse lover ! Made with mostly Canadian actors including First Nation Graham Greene and Gary Farmer. Luke Kirby is excellent in leading role . Set is in Fort Erie Canada and revolves around Kirby just released from 2 years of prison coming " home" to his fathers friend ( Carradine) a struggling farmer and small time race horse raiser struggling to make ends meet . All about setting things right and the little guy trying to come out ahead by taking down corrupt creeps . I highly recommend watching this movie and have no idea how some gave it a fair rating. Also has great background music and soundtrack .
BadlandZ I don't know what to say about this movie. The first hour and ten minutes were REALLY slow and boring. Twenty minutes in I kept asking myself, "am I going to watch this thing?"Then right at the 1:10 marker when Pauly said to Dean "don't ask questions Dean" it turned around, and became a good warm hearted comedy. From there on, it was pretty good. If the whole movie was like that I'd rate it way higher. But watching a snooze fest for an hour and ten minutes isn't redeemed by 15 minutes of a good ending.So, in the end, it wasn't even average, it was boring, then pretty good. I think a rating of 5 stars is generous.
MBunge This collection of competing clichés, pure stupidity and the bizarrely frequent use of "the F word" is quite unintentionally amusing. Writer Brad Smith and director Leonard Farlinger misfire with virtually everything they try to do in this film. However, they flounder and fumble so blatantly and hopelessly that you can have a decent laugh at their expense.The movie begins with Ray Dokes (Luther Kirby) getting out of prison. The problems with the movie begin at the exact same moment because it appears that Ray is actually being released from high school detention. Add in the fact that Ray looks like one the murderers from In Cold Blood who's been time transported to the present day and that the character's emotional range stretches from glum to disappointed to apathetic and you can tell right away this film is going to stink on ice. Ray is picked up by an old friend of his father's, Pete Culpepper (Keith Carradine), a saccharinely stoic farmer who's constantly claiming to be poor, yet still has the financial wherewithal to have his own race horse. Pete even has his own foul mouthed hard ass of a jockey, Chrissie Nugent (Rachael Leigh Cook). Ray and Chrissie almost instantly start screwing each other, even though Ray still pines of Etta Parr (Lisa Ray), his old girlfriend before he went to prison. Etta is also losing her farm and considering that neither she nor Pete ever appear to do any farm work, it's not surprising they're in the same boat.Our villain is the lazy, idiotically scheming Sonny Stanton (Noam Jenkins), who wants to buy Pete and Etta's land for a housing development and also hatches several different nefarious plans involving his wealthy father's race horses. I'm not going to go into any more detail on the plot of this thing because trying to make sense of it gives me a headache. This story is more poorly constructed than a Lincoln Log cabin assembled by a team of feral cats that have had all their legs amputated. Nothing that happens in this film makes a lick of sense.But it's not only that All Hat is a terrible tale. It's also very badly told. Let me give you just one example. One of the most rudimentary techniques in storytelling is to build up the villain as a real, credible threat to your hero. The stronger and more imposing the bad guy, the greater the challenge posed to the good guy. It heightens the drama in the hero's struggle and makes his victory all the more satisfying. That is as basic as you can get for telling a good story. But these filmmakers not only ignore such fundamental principles, they go out of their way to do the exact opposite. Almost every minute Sonny Stanton is on screen, he's insulted, defied, undermined or humiliated by practically every other character. Even the comic relief supporting roles stand up to Sonny and make him look like a fool. That makes Sonny as menacing as a newborn lamb and sucks all the tension and excitement out of a movie that wasn't exactly going to be compelling in even the best case scenario.Now Rachael Leigh Cook is cute as the dickens and…well, I was trying to think of another positive element of All Hat but I got nothing'. So, unless you're psycho-sexually fixated on Miss Cook, you can only enjoy this film by making fun of it while you watch. I'd suggest you rent something else instead.
jeremy-340 A classic tale of the little people vs the big 'uns. It is set in a community that could be anywhere in rural North America under threat of suburbanization, but happens to be Ontario. This could matter from a box office point of view since it is sufficiently recognizable to Americans as to not need to be seen as a Canadian film.The soulful, moody score from guitarist Bill Frisell helps carry the film forward as the down-on-their luck band of battlers try to fight the rising tide as represented by the billionaire's dastardly son. Sonny Stanton is played so interestingly by Noam Jenkins that you end of sort of liking him anyway. My favorite scene focuses on him getting into deeper trouble losing tons of money at the track.Lisa Ray and Rachael Leigh Cook fight for most delicious horse country babe. Ernie Hudson, Keith Carradine, David Alpay, and Joel Keller, among others, give character performances that provide a fun weft to the scheming warp of counter-scam mastermind played by an understated-but-credible Luke Kirby.Proof that Canadian film can be fun, I greatly enjoyed this film!