The Lazarus Papers
The Lazarus Papers
R | 01 January 2010 (USA)
The Lazarus Papers Trailers

Lonny Smith, a young man with a suitcase full of money, who might drop dead at any moment is searching for love with each dying breath even if he has to pay for it...

Reviews
rodolphebourgeoys

The movies is very difficult to tolerate in the first 30 minutes but I am the persevering type. I watched it entirely. After the initial 30 minutes, it gets interesting. It is about a guy, the Chaman (Trejo) who cannot die but had enough of this world. He wants to die. Another one wants to die happy. Also, having nothing to loose makes him free and quite spiritual. It is also about how love can act as a redemption. How a single day of love can validate a whole lifetime and let you die happy. I wont say more, I need to let room for enjoyment. Very interesting. It is not a blockbuster high budget production. The scenario is more of the kind of intellectual, meaning-oriented movie we would expect more from the Scandinavians or the Germans. It is a bit hard to follow and I am not sure I understand everything in the movie.However, I agree with those users who feel deceived by the box cover. The synopsis is fair but the cover is unrepresentative. It is not a war movie. It is a "higher plane" movie.

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Jan Strydom

Luckily I found out in advance that this film was nothing like what the cover art suggested it would be and even though it also goes under the title THE MERCENARY the plot doesn't really revolve around any kind of mercenary. It's really a very odd film but I didn't think it was bad at all. The plot was intriguing enough to draw my attention and it was very different to other films Gary Daniels had appeared in before.I thought about giving a synopsis which I don't normally do so that people would have a better idea of what to expect but I discovered the plot actually sounds more confusing than it really is. If you watch the film itself the plot makes more sense because there is more than one character story and sometimes it goes from being a supernatural drama to a love story to an action movie and during the third act it's all three at once.On the technical side it's really well made, the cinematography is very nicely done and the acting isn't all that bad. The characters do start to grow on you after a while and granted the film isn't perfect by any means.Overall, it's a very odd film but not bad but I recommend you ignore the cover art as it doesn't really represent what the film really is about. You can expect to see an intriguing plot that is more of a supernatural story with a bit of romance and a few mild action scenes.

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Dominik Schlatter

Never judge a book by it's cover, right? Well, the same goes (in this case at least triple) for DVDs. The cover is deception in it's purest form. It lead me to believe I had just bought some straight-to-DVD action flick with Danny Trejo and Gary Daniels doing some, well, action stuff. Nothing could be further from the truth.The movie is terrible! But then again I'm not the right audience. Some art-house fans would maybe see some value where I couldn't. I just kept thinking how weird (WEIRD!!), confusing and boring this movie is.What gave me the (absurd) idea that it might be an action flick? Oh, I don't know! Maybe some things on the cover like helicopters (as someone already pointed out: Did. Not. Appear. In. One. Single. Scene!), soldiers, , Danny Trejo made to look like he's holding an assault rifle? Damn those marketing people for what they did. Absolutely outrageous!What happens now? IMDb users will continue to rip the movie to shreds and who can blame them? That's what you get for tricking the wrong community into buying your product. As an old Gary Daniels fan it pains me to see him doing a good job in such a painfully bad production. Now I'm actually afraid to watch 'Forced to Fight'...

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ajs-10

The only reason I watched this is because one of the directors of the company I work for asked me to look at it. It had confused him and so he wondered if I could make any sense out of it. Well, I could, but it's so badly made that I really struggled. The acting, the script… everything about was amateurish and didn't really have any quality to it. More of my thoughts after this brief summary.When a village in South East Asia is attacked by a mercenary, Sebastian Riker, he murders the village holy man and healer, Aroon, and takes a girl, Nana to work as a prostitute. Little does he know but Aroon cannot die, his powers will not allow that until he can find someone to take his place. So he wanders the land looking for such a person. Some time later Nana is addicted to heroin and working for Riker as a prostitute. He has a scam, luring unsuspecting American tourists over with the promise of a marriage to one of his girls. Of course they get robbed and left in the street. Terminal patient Lonny Smith is such a victim, but he doesn't know it when he meets Nana. She is struck by his honesty and decides to break away from Riker. They go to a refugee camp near her former village, but Riker is on their trail and he wants his cash. I'll leave it there… I've probably made it sound a lot more interesting than it really is! I don't think the Spoiler Police will be bothered this time though.As I've already said, this is not a very good film and one I really cannot recommend by any stretch of the imagination. It's very poorly produced and, I'm guessing, had a tiny budget. I'll just give a few name checks so you can see just who you're not going to see acting pretty woefully. Danny Trejo played Aroon, Gary Daniels played Sebastian Riker, Krystal Vee played Nana and Johnny Lee Played Lonny Smith. Oh, and I should mention a small part for Damon Whitaker (Forest Whitaker 's brother) as Dock Bagley (a cop).My Score: 3.3/10.IMDb Score: 2.5/10 (based on 329 votes at the time of going to press).Rotten Tomatoes Score: N/A (No listing).

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