Director: James Cullen Bressack
Year: 2020
Country: USA
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Action
Plot:
Following a successful robbery on his holdings, a crime-boss decides to consolidate efforts in an attempt to curtail his tracks in order to focus more on keeping his son out of trouble. When it transpires that his son is actually responsible for the murder of a seemingly innocent kid in the organization for loosing the money in the heist, his ex-police officer father comes out of retirement and heads out for answers managing to disrupt their business more than expected. As the battle for revenge of his son’s name takes him deeper into the criminal underworld than he wanted he comes across murderous henchmen, crooked cops and untrustworthy allies standing in his way.
Review:
This here wasn’t all that bad of an effort. One of the more enjoyable aspects is the rather strong and touching setup that gives this a strong start. From the rage at being able to see his son turn out the way he did while being helpless to stop it and fueling that into a motivation for revenge, this setup is useful at getting a rather enjoyable time with the determination and motivation given. There’s a lot of nice action here as a result of his motivational rampage against the different levels of the gang with the fine mixture of hand-to-hand combat and shootouts coming into play here, featuring the dismantling of the group with his bare-hands or a fine shootout at the cabin which maintains a rather realistic edge rather than flashy, over-the-top gun-work. Those all keep the film moving along throughout it’s running time so it’s not really dull or boring at all, giving this one enough to like to hold it up overall.
There are a few problems here. One of the biggest problems is the fact that there’s a lot going on here that never gets explained and makes for a difficult immersion into the film. Starting off with masked men shooting guards and making off with stolen money with no context, then going to a party at a crime boss’ house and dealing with a kid who lost the gangsters’ money all in rapid fashion that comes off in a rather scattershot approach. Since there’s nothing about this that explains why we’re jumping to these various plot-points with then-unnamed characters doing random things, that we’re not given much to go on as for what’s going on is a bit distracting and jarring coming into things.
There’s also a strange issue with the film’s behavior toward the son of the crime-boss who’s supposedly the main villain in this piece. Not only is the constant family meetings he has with his dad feel redundant and time-consuming wastes but there’s little about them that couldn’t have been inferred anyway based on the actions he exudes that causes the meetings to begin with. Since they tend to repeat themselves anyway with the repeated instructions not to do anything but then doing more to infuriate the cop coming after him, this seems like a rather curious aspect to keep it going as often as it does, especially with the later scenes seeing him taking action against others in his employ with more authority and urgency which renders all of this meeting up unnecessary. Still, there’s not much else wrong here.
Overview: **.5/5
While there’s some minor flaws to be had with the confusing beginning and a somewhat questionable tactic that gets repeated far too often, the rest of the film is a solid indie action film which is quite enjoyable overall. This is certainly worthwhile for those that enjoy such efforts or a fan of the creative side while those that aren’t into either of these aspects or turned off by the flaws should heed caution.
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