September 15th, 2012 
Justin Proper 
Movies are the number one source of entertainment according to a statistic I just made up. Everyone loves going to the movies. It’s a standard date night, and has helped millions of teens awkwardly hold hands in the dark. Movies are a great escape from reality, and help people relieve the stress of their lives. Unfortunately every once in a while a movie gets released that ruins the experience…
I hate politics. Everything about them frustrates me to no end. Attack ads, controversy, this side versus that side, it is all completely ridiculous. When I heard that there was a new movie that was produced by the same company that created the awful 2016: Obama’s America I had to see it, just to see how out of hand all of this nonsense had gotten. So yesterday I went to the movie theater, bought my ticket for Resident Evil: Retribution and watched that movie. Then I snuck in to Last Ounce Of Courage because I cannot justify spending money on something I suspected was politically fueled. Spoiler alert: I was right.
The Movie
According to IMDb and the movie theater I went to Last Ounce Of Courage is about the son of a fallen soldier trying to reconnect with his grandfather, who is still grieving over the loss of his son. If you watched that trailer up there you can see that is not the case. The movie is actually about the mayor of a small town fighting to bring Christmas back to his town where is has been outlawed by the government. That sounds exaggerated, but that is really what it is about.
It is also about patriotic motorcycles.
The main character of the movie is the mayor of a fictional town (and he is also the pharmacist, because mayors have two jobs now I guess). His son died fighting in the middle east 14 years ago and since then the town has had its freedom taken away. Now they cannot display Christmas decorations or crosses or have a town Christmas tree. So the mayor has had enough and he puts all that stuff back up in the town and the rest of the movie is a fight between him and some political figure (it is never said if it is a senator or a representative or anything) over the freedom to put decorations up in the town.
He keeps all the freedom he stole in that weird glass dish.
There is also a subplot involving the mayor’s grandson and some other kids at the local high school taking back the winter play and turning it back in to the story of Jesus’ birth. Oh, and speaking of Jesus, he is in this movie as a magic hobo or something. I am not really sure, it was weird and dumb. The movie also begins and ends with a Ronald Reagan quote, so there’s that too.
The guy that looks like he sells knives at the flea market is supposed to be Jesus.
How Bad Is It?
Before I start with all the reasons this movie is bad for your mental well being I will outline why it is bad for your eyes and ears. The first thing I noticed was that this movie had the cinematography of a soap opera. Actually, that is not fair to soap operas, my friends in college literally made a movie with better shot composition than Last Ounce Of Courage. The titles and special effects for the movie look like they were made in After Effects, but not the newest version, the version from a few years ago that community access channels use. Some of the shots were shaky, or fast, or pointless, and more than once I noticed that the audio was over-modulated. No, it was not the theater I saw it in, the audio was legitimately over-modded.
You can’t tell from the picture, but this scene sounds terrible.
Aside from all that Last Ounce Of Courage also had some of the worst acting I have ever seen appear on screen. The emotion was so forced and fake every scene that was supposed to be emotional just came off as humorous. None of the actors can cry, and they all were supposed to at some point. The kids were the worst. The grandson made one facial expression the entire movie, no matter what the scene was.
This is his angry face. No, seriously, he is supposed to be outraged here.
I would like to say one more time that I hate politics. I think it is totally fine to say what you believe in a movie, that is what cinema is all about: someone expressing themselves artistically. However, if you take away the artistic aspect you just get propaganda, which is what this was. The whole movie the antagonist represents some group. It never says what group or organization, but it becomes very clear very fast that the group is democrats. I do not hate that the movie is anti-democrat, but the way they portray them is completely absurd. The movie says that democrats hate freedom and are doing everything they can to take it away from all citizens. It also says that if you believe in the separation of church and state then you are un-american. When you take things to that extreme so blatantly with no artistic merit it becomes hateful.
Pictured: One of the actors trying to pull the producer’s head out of his own ass.
The thing that really put this movie over the edge in terms of being terrible was the way they used soldiers dying in the middle east to manipulate the audiences feelings to support their message. It literally made me feel physically ill. To take such a tragic thing and use it to force people to see things your way is truly disgusting and makes everyone involved with this movie a reprehensible person in my eyes.
So how bad was Last Ounce Of Courage? It was so bad that if I was not already writing in Nicolas Cage for president this November I would vote straight democratic just to get back at the people who made it. Feel free to use the comment box below to argue with me about this movie, but make sure you have seen it first, if I went to the trouble of seeing something I did not want to see before forming an opinion on it you should do me the same courtesy.
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