Our best guess for you: 3.8 stars
Average of 1698 ratings: 3.8 Stars
On November 13th 1990, in the small New Zealand seaside town of Aramoana, local man David Gray took a high-powered automatic weapon and shot dead 13 people.
It remains the worst mass murder in New Zealand's history.
As emergency services scrambled to reach Aramoana, a handful of young, under-armed local policemen risked their lives trying to find the gunman.
Terrified and confused residents were trapped in their homes for 24 hours, not knowing where David Gray was - or if they would become his next victim.
There were great feats of bravery on that terrible day - from ordinary people in the most extraordinary of situations.
OUT OF THE BLUE is a gripping and powerful story of courage and survival.
44 Member Reviews Write a review
An excellent movie - well worth watching considering it is part of New
Zealand history. I would recommend this to others who were not around at the time that this happened. I was overseas so... Read more
this movie explained what happened for me. Some of the acting was a little weak but on the whole, well worth watching.I would not consider "Out of the Blue" to be cool - it was far too tragic. I thought that the acting was realistic and natural, the production excellent, and all in all, a beautifully presented story.
Unexpected rendition of a tragic day in NZ history. Empathetic to all involved and avoids stating the obvious or even trying to make the gunman the worst kind of guy, more a tragic figure that only... Read more
half understood what he was doing or felt compelled to do.Enlightening and sad at the same time with brave performances by all the actors. Leaves you feeling perversely patriotic.
Interesting DVD based on the events of Aramoana. Typical of NZ production in a matter of fact style drama. I liked the fact that they didn't glorify the violence (for example, if it were an American... Read more
production, they may have had a more detailed view of the bullets hitting the victims and blood splattered all around). Good watch if you are interested in the event.Out of the Blue is a doco-drama-real account type of a movie. Its moving. Cinematography is brilliant.
Being Australian I can relate to this with our Port Arthur massacre in Tasmania. I always ask the question why? What makes people like this tick? It is a good one to watch although sad reality.
I was a tad disappointed with this movie, it was bit on the weak side. Some of the acting wasn't the greatest & the director was off with the setting - looked more like the 80's than 1990 when it took... Read more
place. I thought a much better effort could have been made to tell this terrible story out of respect for the victims that lost their lives. If it wasn't for that fact that this is a true story I don't think it would be rating so well.Can't say that this movie really did it for me. Very depressing story of a girl who really had no hope in life due to her upbringing - ended appropriately I thought the only way it really could. Ok... Read more
for a watch but not one to put you in a happy frame of mind!Unfortunately this film has a very 1980s New Zealand film feel about it with the director trying to utilize some clever story telling techniques, and failing.
The story for this movie was obviously... Read more
beyond the abilities of the director, whose failed attempts at clever story telling only serve to confuse and detract from the story as you try to figure out what it is the director is trying to tell you instead of watching the movie.Out Of The Blue was extremely disappointing given its riveting build-up. Unlike the far superior predecessor, the 1981 'Bad Blood', OOTB had a shallow hesitancy about it that left me asking: what was... Read more
the point?Technically, the film is well crafted, but sterile beyond that. It suffers from the lack of strong central characters and I'm surprised Sarkies took the risk of making this an ensemble piece. One can't help wondering if he was so scared of the Aramoana reaction that he played it straight, so the film contained nothing but 'facts'. A.k.a. all plot and no story. Bad Blood, on the other hand, draws its audience into a much less predictable story even though it's based accurately on New Zealand's first mass killer, Stan Graham.
After discovering that OOTB wasn't about anything, we were left to find that it also wasn't about anyone. It went through the key events, faithful to reality, and then it was 'good luck and good night.'
In the end, OOTB was just a very expensive re-enactment and it's impossible to know what the director was trying to achieve. It might just as well have been a one-hour TV docu-drama. This wasn't a filmmaker wading into the surf, this was a filmmaker nervously dipping his toes in the water.