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I'll tell you why so serious

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama

I don't mean that it is a good movie but it's a funny and entertaining one. For example, I love the premise: a bunch of thieves start making a robbery and not much time later they become the hostages of two criminals worst than them. And this story still reserves a couple of twists (three or four in fact) that maybe are not very believable but at least are unexpected.The film has its flaws: the gunfires are a little slow and not so exciting as the director hopes (but sometimes this shortcoming becomes a virtue giving a touch of realism to the action); the two bad guys, especially one of them, overact; and Michael Madsen... well, Madsen has become in last years a parody of himself, but that's not bad here considering that his character is a total asshole.However, the rest of the cast is fine. I liked very much Arnold Vosloo (sober and credible) and the always outstanding Bai Ling (if you have doubts about her talent just watch Red Corner). Also I liked Edward Furlong and the support cast. And yes, this is a low budget movie but money is not always a necessary condition for getting something interesting and acceptable.To pay attention on the weak points or the strong ones depends only on the mood and expectations of the viewer. In my case I have seen potential and good moments, and I have enjoyed with what I have seen.

This film has an apt title. It starts out with some life and then chokes to death on its own indolent vomit. Writer/director Jon Keeyes sets up an interesting and multi-layered conflict and then, like he blew a brain fuse or something, he fritters away every last ounce of potential as the movie gets dumber and dumber and dumber until it ends in a twist so cretinous I almost suspect Keeyes let his pet hamster write the last 3 pages of the script.The story opens with a quartet of gun-wielding robbers storming into the offices of Duca Enterprises and taking all the money in the office's walk in safe. The cops show up before the robbers can escape and one of them is shot to death while the other three seek refuge in a café across the street. Once inside, though, the three remaining robbers and everyone else are taken hostage by two thugs who are much more violent and much stupider than our initial gang of thieves. The thugs couldn't resist the sight of two duffel bags full of money coming into the café just as they were having lunch. Meanwhile, the local cops on the outside of the café have to deal with the interference of the owner of Duca Enterprises, who comes off like a cross between Boss Hogg from the Dukes of Hazard and the guy with the wings in his hair from the Sopranos, along with an ATF agent who thinks he's living his own personal Quentin Tarantino movie.Now, it might not blow you away, but that's a cute little set up for a crime flick. There are several different dramatic dynamics established that could each go in different directions. For the first 15 to 20 minutes of Living and Dying, I really wanted to see how the story would end up. Unfortunately, where it went was down the rathole of poor plotting, terrible characterization, some remarkably inconsistent acting from Edward Furlong, a couple of inappropriate European accents and a rape scene that seems to be in the movie solely to satisfy the particular predilection of Jon Keeyes.This thing flails about with no idea of what it's doing or who the film is focused on. There's a subplot that's so crudely developed it's practically pre-embryonic, yet still manages to blatantly contradict itself. Michael Madsen looks like he's lost at sea, doing that same Michael Madsen shtick he always does but in an almost plaintive manner, as though he's trying to signal someone to rescue him from this mess. Furlong's performance switches about halfway through from trying reasonably hard to not giving a crap about anything. The hero cop of the film, played by Arnold Vosloo, is entirely emasculated and then offered up again to the audience as though they should take him seriously.Oddly, the best thing about Living and Dying is the acting of Ling Bai. She's best known as a tabloid chick who sort of sustains herself on a level somewhere below Tila Tequila in the pseudo-celebrity ecosystem. Though she's not asked to do a lot here, she's convincing both as a mother driven to crime to get back her daughter and as someone shot in the gut. That is, she's convincing as a gunshot victim until the movie becomes so moronic that it treats her injury like a hangnail.After a promising beginning, this film turns into garbage…and it's a more annoying sort of garbage for having started off decently. Unless you need to buck up your self-image by watching a movie made by someone obviously more feeble-witted than you are…give this one a pass.

This movie had an interesting cast, it mat not have had an a list cast but the actors that were in this film did a good job. Im glad we have b grade movies like this one, the story is basic the actors are basic and so is the way they execute it, you don't need a million dollar budget to make a film just a mix of b list ordinary actors and a basic plot. I like the way they had the street to themselves and that there was no one else around and also what i though was interesting is that they didn't close down a café to set there gear and that they did it all from a police station. Arnold vosloo and Michael madsen did a great job at portraying there roles in the hostage situation. This was a great film and i hope to see more like it in the near future.

Terrible movie. Nuff Said.These Lines are Just Filler. The movie was bad. Why I have to expand on that I don't know. This is already a waste of my time. I just wanted to warn others. Avoid this movie. The acting sucks and the writing is just moronic. Bad in every way. The only nice thing about the movie are Deniz Akkaya's breasts. Even that was ruined though by a terrible and unneeded rape scene. The movie is a poorly contrived and totally unbelievable piece of garbage.OK now I am just going to rag on IMDb for this stupid rule of 10 lines of text minimum. First I waste my time watching this offal. Then feeling compelled to warn others I create an account with IMDb only to discover that I have to write a friggen essay on the film just to express how bad I think it is. Totally unnecessary.