directors: Ian and David Purchase
writers: Ian and David Purchase
genre: Sci-Fi/Video Games
I thought as a movie reviews blog, that we shouldn’t let ourselves just review feature films but also short films at times. Escape from City 17 is a short film based upon the video game series Half Life. It’s the first of 5 short films by the Purchase Brothers on Half Life. The short film is not awards worthy, it even has amateurish acting. But its want any fanboy would want.
The first short film of the Escape from City 17 series is placed right after the events of Half Life 2 with the Citadel’s reactor about to blow up. We follow two rebels as they try to flee the city and avoid the combine. As they try to stay alive we get to see a lot of Half Life trademarks as scientist Kleiner talking in the background or combine soldiers killing rebels and the classic feel of doom growing over the spectator.
With a low budget of 500$ and the Purchase brothers made a little fan film into an epic and mind blowing experience with the money at hand. They have combined live action with video from the video game Half-Life 2 which was graphically enhanced with the method of complicated tracking and rotoscoping. This makes the experience even more delightful.
What Escape from City 17 accomplishes is not groundbreaking to cinema but to extent of low budget effects filmmaking. It shows us that there is talent out there and with the right equipment it doesn’t matter how much money you have but talent. As well as the fact that videogame lore can continue on film or TV format in many successful ways in the right hands.
Any Half Life or by and large videogames fan needs to see this. Its one of those things that make fan boys tingle as they wish that one day they can see their favorite videogame in full glory. But for now we will have to just live with this and soon to be released second part of the short film series so stay tuned.
Personal Rating:
Review by Paul
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