Ryan Rathbun | Through the Shattered Lens

A young man named Eric (Allen Williamson) enlists as a combat medic and is sent to Afghanistan. Eric truly thinks that he’s going to help to make the world a better place but, what he sees and experiences in Afghanistan, leaves him shaken and haunted by memories of the dead and wounded.

Upon returning home, Eric tries to keep himself busy helping his family’s winery recover from the latest round of California wildfires but he still finds himself tormented by his experiences. Suffering from PTSD, Eric discovers that his country is more than willing to send young men overseas to fight but it’s less willing to provide them with the support that they need when they return. With the help of his mother (Elizabeth Gast), his girlfriend (Cayla Black), and a fellow veteran (Stephen Wesley Green), Eric tries to find his place in the world.

Scars is an undeniably low-budget film. If you’re looking for a war film that is full of epic battle scenes and which will leave you feeling as if you actually are in the middle of Afghanistan, Scars is not the film to go with. Indeed, it took me a while to realize that Eric was in Afghanistan because Afghanistan looked exactly like California. As well, towards the end of the film, there’s a few moments of clumsy melodrama that feel as if they were added solely so that this rather talky film could be sold as a thriller.

But you know what? In the end, those flaws don’t matter. Scars is a heartfelt film, featuring an excellent lead performance from Allen Williamson, playing a man who is burdened by guilt but who never lets go of hope. Scars is a film about the pain that people carry with them and the struggle that men like Eric have when it comes to opening up about that pain. (Not all of the scars in the film are physical.) It’s an indictment of a society that, far too often, pushes the needs of veterans to the side. That’s especially true if that veteran served in an unpopular war, like the ones in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Considering that we still don’t know how many people were left behind when we left Afghanistan, Scars is a film that feels all too relevant.

And yes, Eric Roberts is in Scars. Playing a sympathetic doctor, he has about a minute of screentime towards the end of the film. It’s always a good idea to put your Eric Roberts cameo at the end of your movie, just to make sure that audiences stick around for the entire film.

Previous Eric Roberts Films That We Have Reviewed:

“Blow harder!”

— Val (Lauren Parkinson) in Murderbot

In a remote army base, three busty scientists create a busty robot named Raquel (Melissa Brasselle). General Griffin (Arthur Sellers) is impressed that Raquel has mastered all forms of combat but he is not happy by her dominatrix outfit because, according to him, America’s enemies don’t fear cleavage.

One night, while the scientists all have hot dates, Raquel escapes from the base and goes to a nearly deserted desert town, where she kills a leering gas station attendant and a busty diner owner. Meanwhile, a group of busty teenagers and their boyfriends run out of gas while driving through town and find themselves being stalked by Raquel.

This is a Jim Wynorski film so you know what you’re going to get, a lot of cleavage (though, for once, no actual nudity), a splattering of blood, and some deliberately corny humor that is sometimes self-aware enough to be funny. Murderbot was originally named Killbot, a reference to Wynorski’s first film, Chopping Mall. Murderbot even duplicates that film’s famous exploding head scene, though it’s the entire body that explodes this time.

This is pretty dumb but Wynorski fans should be happy. Even though no one will be watching this movie for the acting, I actually did like the performances of Walker Mintz and Sylvia Thackery, playing respectively a trumpet player and the girl that he likes. As Raquel, Melissa Brasselle is no Arnold Schwarzenegger but she still handles dreadful one-liners like “You’ve been deleted,” with enough aplomb to make them tolerable.

Murderbot is proof that, no matter how much things change, Jim Wynorski will always by Jim Wynorksi.