I decided to catch a 60(ish) minute Tubi movie today while in between chores. and stumbled across my favourite subgenre of 'Tubi movie' the 'How the hell is this on here?!' subgenre.

Grand Theft Auto: Murder City is an oddity of a picture. A film that almost certainly didnt seek permission or approval from Rockstar or Rockstar North to use the 'Grand Theft Auto' name. But did it anyway…only to then get cold feet on the idea of making an unlicensed 'Grand Theft Auto' movie…But not so much that they dont steal a lot of elements from the Grand Theft Auto games…its…a mess honestly.

So the film opens in the 80s apparently, and we're introduced to 'Max' who is three years old and playing 'Grand Theft Auto 5' on a flatscreen TV…his dad dies of an overdose, his mum is horrified, Max is terrified and then it jumps forward 40 years…and a now 28 year old Max is living in the tough suburban hood of…a picket fence suburb with nice tidy gardens.

Lifes tough in the hardened, dead eyed world of cozy suburbia, but Max is in it to get rich or die trying. When he tries to steal a van, he's caught by the owner, but rather than call the cops, the owner has a better idea and sets Max up as a dealer on his 'turf'.

From here? things get a bit confusing, as we jump around a fair bit exploring the 'hood' meeting several residents all with their own problems, backstories, tales of revenge and dreams of making it big, while Max kind of…drifts in and out of the various stories.

Its a world full of sex, drugs, rap and murder…and the big question is, Will Max make it out ALIVE, letalone 'Make it'.

So I suppose the question on many peoples minds right now is exactly 'HOW' 'Grand Theft Auto-ey' is this movie? And the answer is 'not very'. Most of the elements that tie this film to the game are cosmetic and/or literally copied directly from the various plots of the series.

Most of the pilfery seems to be centered around 'GTA: San Andreas', 'GTA 4' and 'GTA 5'. and I can say here exactly whats been 'half inched'. They've taken the theme tune from 'San Andreas' which plays at least a couple of times through the film, the theme from GTA 4 and incidental music from GTA 5 is also lifted and shifted into this film. Sometimes when characters die, they'll put a 'WASTED' caption on screen (as per what happens when you die in the game) but its inconsistent, it only happens a handful of times, and doesnt happen on every death. They also steal the 'Mission Completed: Respect +' captioning from San Andreas at the end of the movie, alongside the in game stings when these captions are triggered.

They also for some reason steal the 'Weapons Wheel' (an in game tool used to select your weapon of choice) from GTA 5…but again, its literally just a cropped .png of the weapons wheel, and its inconsistent as to when its used, sometimes they remember to use it, sometimes they dont.

They dont really steal too many 'shot for shot' cutscenes from the games…but they do basically steal the entire opening of San Andreas with Officer Tenpenny and CJ for a weird 5 minute segment that serves no purpose here other than to say 'Yeah we played 'San Andreas'.

They also occasionally try to recreate H.U.D aesthetics, whenever someone robs someone they show a money counter that goes up, when they enter a new part of town they'll put a caption in the bottom left to indicate the change. But these are all in white, on blown out grey and white skies with no shadowing or bordering…meaning 3/4's of the time you cant even see, letalone read whats popped up. GTA 5 gameplay is hidden in the backgrounds of shots a couple of times. and the soundtrack is a mixture of licensed pop and rap songs that they almost certainly didnt get permission to use, and independent talent thats actually not half bad.

The script itself is a mess, it sets up Max as the lead character before going down a more 'Interwoven anthology' pathway, bringing in WAY too many characters, WAY too many motivations and not really making it all that clear exactly what the stories building to. The characters arnt really well defined, dont really have motivations beyond 'Make it' or 'Survive'. the dialogue (whats audible anyway) is really rough, feels more like improv, and is usually really self contained to whatever scene is on screen…Meaning it feels like your watching clips from about 50 different 'gang' movies, that just so happen to very rarely feature an appearence from a recurring actor called 'Max'.

The ending is underwhelming, there isnt a sense of pay off, half the characters that are set up, dont end up going anywhere and given this thing clocks in at 66 minutes (5-6 minutes of titles and credits take it to about an hour) it feels criminally slow in places.

The direction is a heady mixture of low quality, badly lit, fuzzy handheld shakey cam footage, stock footage and for a couple of shots, they got a drone. non of the footage matches, theres no clear colour profile, and on at least one stock shot I believe I saw a watermark.

It feels less like a coherent vision, and more like the director was making this thing on the fly, shooting whatever came to mind, with whoever he could convince to come out with him over a year of weekends. and while I'll always applaud a low/no budget film maker for getting a project over the line. that really is where the bare minimum begins.

The cine is a mixture of poor to dreadful, a lot of the shots are shakey, badly lit, have low quality effects (bad muzzle flashes are SO common here) or filters put onto them, at several points in the film they leave outtakes in the final cut, or let the shots run past the 'cut' leading to on set chatter and off camera laughter. the lack of a colour grade really impacts the films sequencing, making this feel very much as if its woven together from offcuts, rather than having a shot list and being planned.

Night shots are either blown out by flood lights, or barely viewable, the whole thing just feels unpolished, and unfinished. But not in a raw 'this was intentional' way…in a 'this is the best we could do.' way…

The performances are hard to guage, largely because so much of it is made up of what feels like improvised dialogue, 'off script' patter or outtakes. I cant honestly say any cast member stood out as 'good', 'memorable' or even interesting…they're all just kind of…there…and not great. When I can say comfortably that the sex scenes in this film make 'The Human Tornado' feel like 'Emmanuelle'. I hope that sets the bar.

and the soundtrack, as mentioned, is largely a mixture of stolen tracks and independent performances, I didnt mind the original stuff so much, the title track 'Grand Theft Auto Murder City' is probably the strongest original piece and they run it into the ground. I laughed.

But its here we have another problem, which is they didnt have particularly good sound recording equipment on set, which means a LOT of the on set performances are muffled, inaudible or just really poor quality, even Tubi's own caption service struggled to figure out what was being said or going on. and the ADR work would have Doris Wishman asking for another take…its SO bad.

OH! and I completely forgot to mention, theres a smoke alarm chirp every so often in the background of the film whenever ADR is used…If your terminally online, im sure you'll understand why thats jawdropping…I cant be convinced they didnt do it on purpose.

Watching this film, I was reminded of an old favourite of mine 'White Glove Massive' and I think with a few beers, this film and that one could make a half palettable double feature. But thats probably the only way you'd ever get me to watch this one again, and I absolutely cannot recommend this one. Im amazed it hasnt been sued off the face of the earth by this point, I think you'd really have to be in a very specific headspace to get anything other than frustration and bafflement out of this film honestly. Honestly; spend your time elsewhere.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/grand-theft-auto-murder-city/