“Branded” is a movie that is as hard to find as it is amateurish, nonsensical and bizarre. I could only find one theatre in Omaha that had the guts (or maybe just the theatre space) to show it. That “Branded” snuck its way in the theater at all is a sure sign that the summer movie season is limping to its close. But for those of you whose curiosity has been piqued by the trailer featuring strange, amorphous monsters and high-tension editing, I wish to warn you right now: “Branded” is an amateurly-edited, poorly-conceived and confusing film with shoddy acting, terrible dialogue and a message that looks like the film was meant as a satire and hastily re-edited into an action film when producers looked at the jumbled mess they made and collectively sighed, “Oh, crap.”
“Branded” is the story of Misha Galkin (Ed Stoppard), a Russian historian who was struck by lightning as a child and discovers he has a gift for advertising after he tricks the Russian Mafia into burning down his boss’ vodka kiosk.
Then, he is discovered by an American investor who may or may not be a spy (Jeffrey Tambor) and becomes an executive in a Russian advertising firm during the post-communism business boom after the fall of the Soviet Union.
Meanwhile, Max von Sydow is in cahoots with the fast food industry, orchestrating a plot from a private island to make fat sexy again. Ed Stoppard bludgeons a cow to death. Then he sees fish monsters reminiscent of tropical fish and thinly veiled ripoffs of corporate brands and talks to a hamburger. I died a little inside.

I think I have the major through-line nailed down, but that’s one of the major sins of this movie: I just can’t be sure. Directors Jamie Bradshaw and Aleksandr Dulerayn heap subplot upon subplot without resolution. They double back to include key scenes necessary to understand how the plot is unfolding.
Sometimes they forget altogether and have to use a voice-over to explain exactly what’s going on. At one point, they have Ed Stoppard do a Google search to explain a ritualistic cow sacrifice he performed in the previous scene. God told him to perform the sacrifice. Or a voice in his head did. Or a star cow. Whatever.
The dialogue is no help in making sense of the bizarre logic of the film either. Characters have a habit of saying things that have no bearing on what’s going on in the scene. They ask questions and then answer themselves with the same sentence formed into a declaration: “Do you think I’m going to eat you? I’m not going to eat you!” “Do you think you’re a Buddhist? You’re not a Buddhist!”

The only explanation I can fathom for such a blatant lack of plot logic and focus is that “Branded” was never meant to be this film. So much of this film is atonal and illogical that the only way I can see this being the finished product is that “Branded” was supposed to be another movie entirely.
I think the movie was meant to be a satire on the effects of advertising on our lives, but when the producers saw what they had created, they panicked at how unfunny the movie was and decided to package it into an action film.
I don’t see any other way a star cow and brand monsters and secret cabals of fast food companies could co-exist in the same universe. But what we end up with is an inexplicable action movie with no action that’s only funny when it’s trying to impress upon the viewer just how bad advertising is for humanity’s mental wellbeing.
So by all means, save your mental wellbeing and only see “Branded” if you enjoy watching cinematic train wrecks unfold. This is a film that will only live on in the chronicles of the spectacularly bad, the “Mystery Science Theatres 3000”s of the future.