Caged to Kill

No no no, just NO. I can't even begin to, ok, its supposed to be a comedy I think, but its funny for reasons that were not intentional. I wasted enough time on this movie, two hours I'll never get back. This will be my shortest review ever. Hard NO.

Another month and another Dolph Lundgren VOD movie. An ex cop stages a bank robbery in order to be caught and jailed in the same prison as the ruthless Russian mobster Balam (Chuck Lidell), so he can get revenge against him for killing his family years earlier. Matthew Reese (who you've probably never heard of) is the star of the show here, although you'd never know it as all the promotional material suggests that Lundgren and Liddell are the co-leads despite the fact they're barely in it! Director John Lyde made the action/apocalypse/fantasy films Survivor and Curse of the Dragon Slayer, and manages to cobble together some decent action and fight scenes into a movie that's just an excuse to show people beating one another up. The plot is ludicrous, as are some of the twists, but then what do you expect from a script written by a Spunky Dustin Ward?

'RIOT': Three Stars (Out of Five)

Action flick starring Matthew Reese, Dolph Lundgren, Danielle Chuchran and former UFC champion Chuck Liddell. It was directed by John Lyde; and written by Lyde and first time feature film writer Spanky Dustin Ward. The film tells the story of a police officer, that purposefully gets himself arrested; in order to take down the imprisoned Russian kingpin that murdered his family. The movie's clichéd, but it has it's moments.

Jack Stone (Reese) is a cop, who's obsessed with revenge against a Russian kingpin, named Balam (Liddell); who had his family killed. Balam runs his business from behind bars; in a heavily guarded prison cell. So stone stages a bank robbery, just to have himself arrested. Once he's locked-up, he finds aid from two undercover cops inside (Lundgren and Chuchran).

The movie offers nothing new in the form of originality, or clever filmmaking. The stars are entertaining to watch though, and the fight scenes are decent enough. It's not a film you'll probably remember for very long, after you finish watching it, but it is a fun time while you're viewing it. It's at least as entertaining as I was expecting it to be.

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Chuck Liddell's accent is terrible, and completely unnecessary to the plot (there's no reason for him to be Russian for the story to work).

The producer/lead actor seems to be a good martial artist, but man, he can not act. That's probably okay, though, nobody else in this movie really can, either.

The dialog is awful, but as with many action movies, it really only exists to move the story from one action sequence to the next.

The most unforgivable thing about this action-centric B-movie is that the action is atrocious. I don't know if the choreographer is blind, or has just never seen human beings move before, but these fight scenes had me laughing.

I gave 2 stars instead of one, because the plot is one I haven't seen before. It's not THAT different from other prison movies, but the reason for the antagonist being there is a neat idea.

The last few Dolph Lundgren flicks have been rough going (specifically the Serafini ones like BLOOD OF REDEMPTION), so I entered RIOT with expectations lower than usual. So it was nice to see it actually putting forth some effort. It is essentially a vanity project (lead Matthew Reese's name appears 3 times in the first 30 seconds) and you have to suffer through UFC fighter Chuck Liddell - sporting a huge HGH belly - doing one of the worst Russian accents in the history of cinema (not an easy feat!), but the filmmakers came up with a twisty plot, some cool guard costumes and did some interesting fight choreography (which was obviously influenced by JOHN WICK and THE RAID films). Not a Dolph- classic by any means, but a decent 85 minutes.