Sound mixing is one of those things that’s easy to take for granted in a film. It’s hardly noticeable when proper mixing produces a good balance of dialogue, background music, and sound effects. But take just one of those elements out of the mix, and the entire production becomes unbalanced, making it difficult to concentrate on the story, or anything else for that matter. In Pablo Fendrik’s Ardor, a slow-burning jungle western, there’s very little substance offered in the film, which only increases the awareness of its poor sound design.

Set in an uncomfortably quiet Argentinean rainforest, a mysterious man named Kai (played by a shirtless Gael García Bernal) emerges from the Paraná River to protect a family of farmers against ruthless mercenaries. These armed men capture the family’s daughter Vania (Alice Braga) as a way to force the family to sell their property. Kai shows up to the rescue motivated by the death of his own family in a similar situation. Preferring to let his actions do the talking, Kai silently defends the land from the gunmen using an arsenal of handmade weaponry and tactical traps.

Most of what’s heard in Ardor are background noises: fire crackling, birds chirping, the jungle floor crunching, and the occasional cry from a gory death. But the film doesn’t have much in the forefront of the sound mix to act as a counterbalance to the ambient sounds. Without enough speaking parts or background music to help keep the sound mix balanced, much of Ardor is noticeably muted. Even the film’s gunfights and action sequences feel surprisingly noiseless, making them come across as dull.

Even without the sound issues, the fight sequences are so painstakingly unrealistic they’re hard to take seriously. At one point, Kai escapes in a canoe from not just one but two men shooting at him from point-blank range, yet they only manage to put a bullet hole in his canoe and shoot the oar out of his hand. And when Kai gets the brilliant idea of laying down flat in the canoe, the gunmen immediately throw in the towel and stop shooting. It’s a scene that would feel more at home in an old cartoon.

While most of the film involves characters either hunting or being hunted, it unfolds like a slow-motion chase. Everyone lacks the motivation to get to their destination in any kind of hurry. And fight scenes go unresolved for plot reasons, making Ardor drag on needlessly in order to fill time. With proper pacing, these moments could have had tension and felt more cinematic.

One redeeming quality of Ardor is its attractive cinematography. Taking advantage of the lush tropical backdrop, the film captures the sun-soaked jungle and its dense vegetation as if it were a character itself. There are also some captivating close-ups of a roaming jaguar, whose spiritual bond with Kai adds a mystical element to the story.

Ardor attempts to create a modern twist on the western genre by using a jungle setting and adding in some magical realism, but it falls short due to poor execution. Although it provides plenty of atmosphere, the film severely lacks in just about every other area. Not even a gifted actor such as Gael García Bernal (No, Bad Education, Y Tu Mamá También), who’s usually great in everything, can elevate a film that offers so little to work with. The result is an eco-friendly jungle western with a tedious narrative, predictable outcomes, confusing allusions, and an underwhelming conclusion.

Kriv Stenders’ Kill Me Three Times, isn’t just a movie, it’s a state of mind. By which I mean, in watching the film one rather starts to hope not once but at least three times, that either the film or the viewer will be allowed the release of death. Ok, I’m being melodramatic. But Kill Me Three Times is melocomedic, so I think I’m justified. Stenders claims in his press notes to have wanted to create a popcorn film, and his hitman comedy of errors starts out on the right track, intriguingly telling its story backwards, but its inside-out layers quickly spiral out of control in a bloody frenzy that will cause most viewers to leave any appetite for popcorn on the floor of the theater.

Starting at the end, Simon Pegg (who must have owed someone a favor in between Mission: Impossible and Star Trek films) is hitman Charlie Wolfe, and he’s in rather a pickle. A rare scenario we come to see for this ruthless and self-assured criminal, who we see adeptly taking out a dude as he backtracks how he came to be in his current bind. Charlie starts following a woman, Alice (Alice Braga), who is clearly his next target. But before he can carry out the job, she makes a stop at the office of dentist Nathan (Sullivan Stapleton) and his wife Lucy (Teresa Palmer). Charlie watches as Nathan and Lucy surprisingly knock out Alice and put her in the trunk of their car. As Charlie follows he watches as the amateur husband and wife team enact a scheme to collect life insurance on Lucy by mixing up their dental records, putting the unconscious Alice in the driver’s seat of Lucy’s car before setting it on fire, and sending it off a cliff. Charlie leaves, satisfied his job was just done for him, but in the next segment we flash further back to learn the motivations behind Charlie’s hiring by Alice’s abusive husband—who rightly suspects her of cheating with gas station attendant Dylan (Luke Hemsworth)—and the financial troubles that have led to Lucy and Nathan’s fumbled murderous plans.

When the film goes in for its third, and most convoluted, layer of the story it starts to arc back to the present and just how out of control everyone’s master plans go. In this sort of film a certain level of double-crossing is a given, and yes it can be funny when the double-crossing borders on the ridiculous, but the levels of treachery revealed in the last 15 or so minutes of the film aren’t at all driven by plot and appear to be thrown in for the sake of blood and gore. It’s one thing to be Quentin Tarantino and start off a film at gore levels around 8, quickly elevating to 10 to show he means business, and then escalating to levels around 15 to prove he’s discovered blood-thresholds you didn’t know possible. But starting and maintaining about a 2 and then suddenly erupting into an 8 is just confusing, and like I said earlier, a real appetite suppressant.

Pegg does his best to keep the comedy playful, though Charlie is written like most cocksure hitman, and rather plays into expectations with his bravado and hardness. He’s clearly the most underutilized asset the film has and it’s a tragedy watching him adhere to a script hardly worth his notice. Nathan and Lucy’s storyline is the easiest to laugh at as the mismatched couple fight over their ambitious plan to make some quick money, but their mutual animosity rather ensures their destruction, so there’s no real surprises in their storyline. Braga is the most compelling to watch, fighting for her life and seeking revenge. Hemsworth’s role is minimal, but like all the Hemsworth men, whether by muscle or emotion, makes his presence known. If there is a star of the film it ends up being the Australian coastline, present in almost every scene and rather distracting in how much more appealing it is to everything else happening. And while the bright and airy atmosphere may have played off interestingly against a black comedy, this comedy isn’t nearly dark enough to contrast.

With its layered backwards style, the film moves along at a rather stop-and-go pace; like a student driver using a little too much gas and a little too much pressure on the break. But instead of whiplash, the more likely result of Kill Me Three Times is a general sense of nausea and a lingering feeling that Stenders missed an exit somewhere along the line.