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TINA'S SONG STUDIO: Alexander Corporation PRODUCER: Rotor Productions GENRE: Drama RELEASE DATE: February 18, 2005 DIRECTOR: Jim Jarmusch CAST: Jessica Alba, Alec Baldwin, Kieran Culkin, Frances McDormand, Arielle Dombasle

MC48'S REVIEW | ROBYN'S REVIEW | PEDRO'S REVIEW | J GRAHAM'S REVIEW

MC48 Reviews TINA'S SONG

Tina's Song has a wonderful premise: a girl, Tina, grows up constantly defending her mother that she naturally trains herself to become a hit(wo)man. The concept alone could've been a springboard for the film to reach Besson's "Leon: The Professional" high levels.

The premise had everything going for it. It could provide a sexy, attractive, and, most of all, marketable cast. It could provide action, suspense, and thrills, not to mention had a dramatic arc and a touch of comedy, as well. It had potential for tons of character development with its lead, Tina, (the aforementioned hitwoman), her mother (still suffering from her husband's loss who finds peace and acceptance by getting drunk and letting herself get taken advantage of by men), Will (a shy kid who finds solace with Tina's contrasting aggressive nature), and you could even count Mr. Leonardo (who may or may not truly love Tina as his own daughter, but is afraid of losing her and so underpays her to keep working for him) and Rebecca (who, in a twist of irony, is randomly assisted by Tina, even though Tina's eventual victim is, himself, the victim of Rebecca's heartlessness). See the potentially interesting and complex character arcs here?

Sadly, none of these character paths are explored or even acknowledged. In fact, the writer may not even have seen these possibilities and it's only clicked in my own head. Needless to say, this high-concept premise was botched and poorly executed by both director Jim Jarmusch and the writer. What could've been an excellent film turns out to be a clunky, underwhelming drama.

Plagued with clunky dialogue (although there are some bright spots), total lack of subtlety, awkward lines and descriptions, and many logically-questionable character decisions, not to mention Tina's tendency to monologue to herself, the movie never gets off the ground.

Other than the overall story and concept, some of the few things that can be lauded are the brisk pacing and editing, the soundtrack, the marketing (that rifle article was brilliant), and the decent action sequence with the trucks but, apart from those aspects, there's really not much else to applaud.

Ultimately, despite the great concept and story, Tina's Song falls flat and fails to come anywhere near its full potential.

35/100

ROBYN Reviews TINA'S SONG

Tina's song is about a young woman, Tina who makes money by being a hit man for Mr. Leonardo a mob boss. Her life isn't at all easy, with a drunken mother and a dead father Tina fights to survive as well as raise money to get her mother in a clinic. To add more into the mix she meets Will, her first friend and Rebecca who offers her a record deal. During all this she learns her employer is cheating her and to get back she robs him really pissing him off.

I was intrigued by the story, a teen gangster sounded exciting. I just wish there might have been a little more. Tina was a very interesting character, a strong woman with no qualm in killing  it's interesting but not I got the feeling that there was a lot more you could do with her character. All in all that's what this movie seemed to be good idea, good plot, just need to be developed more.  I finished it wanting to know more about Tina, and Mr. Leonardo. Plus you see Rebecca having a complete character change in the end for no reason. The father is brought up but never explored. As a writer I would kill to have characters like this (no pun intended) their personalities seemed like they were waiting to explode on paper. Unfortunately here they were very contained.

 
The parts of the story that were there was good. Dialogue was somewhat smooth and easy to follow. I think the final scene was very well put together but once again would have been better if the script allowed you to feel more for the characters or know them much at all.

Jessica Alba did amazing she in her own way became Tina. Alec Baldwin did just as well playing a evil yet in someway likeable person. Frances McDormand did very well as the drunken and pathetic mother and helped you feel sorry for her. The rest of the cast. Kieran Culkina and Arielle Dombasle did well.
 As I have said before good plot, great cast, good characters, it just needs more meat.

All in all I give it a:

62/100

PEDRO Reviews TINA'S SONG

“Tina’s Song” is Rotor’s efforts at a film here at HTG. Originally, I believe it was at the Moondance festival at Film-Mogul and was slated for release there. Here’s how it fared in my review.

PLOT: The plot follows Tina (Jessica Alba) who at first seems like just a normal, regular teenager. In the first scene, Tina meets Will (Kieran Culkin) who is getting picked on at the highschool. She befriends him immediately and its obvious that she doesn’t have any friends. The fact that she warmed up to him so fast is a little unbelievable though. We then find out that she is a hitman working for a mob type, Mr. Leonardo (Alec Baldwin). Mr. Leonardo greatly underpays Tina for her jobs. This is a story about Tina who wants to become a musician but finds it hard to get out of her badass ways and to escape Mr. Leonardo. She also tries to help out her mother, (Frances McDormand) with her drinking problem. After a mission for Mr. Leonardo, she meets a record producer, Rebecca (Arielle Dombasle). She agrees to hear Tina’s voice and agrees to record her for free. However, Tina needs money and fast. She wants to send her mom for alcoholic therapy. So she grabs a ton of weapons and shoots people down and gets $15,000 dollars. Mr. Leonardo hears of this and sends his men to kill her in Miami where she is recording. This is where the film ends. The film’s plot had a nice premise but suffered from poor execution at times and was a bit unbelievable to me.

FINAL PLOT GRADE: 50/100

DIALOGUE: There was really nothing special about the dialogue in this film. The dialogue was never really snappy. I also can’t imagine that Tina would tell her friend Will about all the weapons. I know she trusts him but the relationship was just not believable to me. I also don’t see anyone keeping it a secret if their friends tell them about guns and the plans for guns. Jessica Alba basically plays her badass self and so her dialogue is expected and there is nothing new here. The dialogue however isn’t horrible enough to give it below a 15 rating.

FINAL DIALOGUE GRADE: 15/100

CHARACTERS: It’s nice to see a woman as a hitman once in a while but otherwise all the characters are just cliches. We’ve seen the best friend, the mob boss and the alcoholic mother all before, so there was nothing new at these points and the characters brought nothing new to the table that we haven’t seen before. I think that the characters in this film were almost a complete and utter mess.

FINAL CHARACTERS GRADE: 10/100

CASTING: I’m not the biggest Jessica Alba fan but I think that she’s always perfect in the badass role. I loved the rest of the cast, Kieran Culkin, Alec Baldwin, Frances McDormand and Arielle Dombasle are all great. I’m also a huge Jim Jarmusch fan. I only home that the great cast could have helped the film itself to make it better.

FINAL CASTING GRADE: 100/100

PACING: I wasn’t too keen on the pacing in this film. At times the film flows too slow and can bore us but also it can move too quickly like towards the end. I think that the script was a bit too short to really get everything onto one screen that needed to be told. The scenes seem to be added sloppily together and just seem like a big blur in most sequences. Most of the scenes are to short so we never really get into what the characters are doing and that’s what made the relationship between Tina and Will so unbelievable.

FINAL PACING GRADE: 10/10

ADVERTISING: I liked the ads for the film although I don’t remember seeing too much as it was a while ago. The main theater page however is great and the ads made me vote high for it. Plus, since it was scheduled to release back at Film-Mogul, I was really anticipating this one. I liked the ads that were shown but also wanted to see more.

FINAL ADVERTISING GRADE: 80/100

WRITING: Overall to me the writing was sloppy. Like I said, the scenes just seemed like a blur and there was really nothing to remember. The characters weren’t written to have any really great character traits to make them memorable either. I was really anticipating this film and it really became a letdown. However, some of the sequences really did seem heartfelt and I thought that the character of Tina was interesting enough to award this film some merit. It’s not often that we see a strong female lead and it is fresh and nice to see. I really do want to see what Rotor comes up with next though.

FINAL WRITING GRADE: 40/100

FINAL OVERALL GRADE: 44/100

J GRAHAM Reviews TINA'S SONG

Wow. Just, wow. And I don't mean that in a good way. I'm not even exactly sure where to start. The film is a mess of cliches, cardboard characters, terrible dialog, and messy action scenes melded together to form some sort of Frankenstein monster. This film oozes potential, as it has a competent plot, but doesn't have the abilities, or skill to execute it's ideas. In a singular word, it's turgid. It's obvious that the writer has invested time and effort into this thing, as it shows some real thought. But it doesn't salvage what could have been a solid, somewhat entertaining action movie.

Tina is a high school student/ mob enforcer with an alcoholic mother who is so desperate for a drink that she's willing to 'make it' with whomsoever buys her one. Of course this angers the hell out of Tina, and she blames her mother for the reality she lives in. At the same time, Tina's boss, Mr. Leonardo treats her like 'his own daughter' while hustling her out of money that she deserves for the jobs she commits. After a chance meeting with a recording executive who happens to mention what real hit men get paid, Tina goes on a rampage, in an attempt to get back at Mr. Leonardo in whatever way possible. The film attempts to humanize Tina by creating a relationship between her and a gawky boy from her school who has an American Beauty-esque fascination with taping everything that moves on his little video camera, which indirectly introduces him to Tina in the first place.

There's nothing redeemable about Tina as a character. She enjoys killing people. She's violent, she hurts people. She hates her mother, and not in a simple, 'teenage angst' type way. She really despises the woman. Even her relationship with Will doesn't salvage her any, as it really doesn't make sense, and suffers from any real build up. In short, Tina is a brilliant anti-hero, but lacks any sort of emotional core or moral compass that made classic antiheroes out of Dirty Harry and Michael Corleone. She lives with no justification for her actions, her primary goal is to get her mother into rehab, and while that may be a noble notion, one can't help but feel that Tina wants her mother so she herself doesn't have to take care of her. The supporting cast feel like a bunch of Tina's victims, none of them leave any real emotional impact, and even when Tina's last minutes roll around in a montage at the end of the film, the viewer feels terribly cold to the kid who wanted to be a singer more than anything else in the world.

The scenes clip away quickly, giving the film a jarring edge as it swings the viewer from one sequence to another.  The dialog lags, and is horribly unrealistic, as Tina spouts off poorly executed one liners. The dialog is an exercise in patience, the viewer's really, as you might want to stop reading the film after the first scene, which makes no real sense. Tina comes off as the villain of the peace. Not the villain you sympathize with, or root for, but a straight up unlovable girl whose view on life consists of 'my way or the highway.' Even the film's bad guy, Mr. Leonardo, barely comes off as menacing in any way. The film is all Tina, as she's the only one it attempts to build up. But when she's nothing more than a one dimensional ass kicker, then you know that the film's failed in spades.

Possibly the only thing good about the film is that it's over quickly, and that too, is good only for the audience's sake.

30/100

Ritchie Steven
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