Shrapnel

No pun intended - especially because it is the father in this case who is really looking for her ... and there is a different case to be made than the book/movie I am referring to in my summary headline. If you like B-action movies this may float your boat - but there are better movies of course, even in this category.

Still it has a bad boy - I mean a Lost Boy (well not the group per se, but from the movie) and other actors you may recognize. I'd say a pretty decent cast - one that does work overall too. Story is easy to follow (that is me being nice I reckon), still suspension of disbelief is more than necessary to have fun with this.

For a low budget film, this was pretty good. It reminds me of Rambo Last Blood, but with a better outcome and ending. It's not perfect by any means, but it's entertaining and the fight scenes are really well done. Yes, the story has been done before, but so has almost every story out there these days. The camera work was blurry at times as well, but not enough to interfere with the movie. I liked it for a B movie and would love to see more like this.

However, my biggest gripe with the movie was that some of the actors and actresses could have been better picked. The wife just didn't act very good and the brother of the cartel leader didn't exactly look like a tough man or scary. The scene with the wife in bed was painful to watch and the brother acting tough when attacking the house was too, but everything else was pretty good.

It would be best if you first switched off any expectations of reality. This is a B move, and with that mindset, I enjoyed it. It does take around the half-hour mark to get the action going, and it doesn't spend time introducing the viewer to the victim; Shrapnel expects that we understand and move on. This is well done, with lots of splatter and a little torture. Having watched Equalizer 3 recently, I thought if the script and production had been a little better, you could swap Jason Patric for Denzel Washington, and Shrapnel would have been a better Equalizer 3. But Jason Patric holds his own. Leave any reasoning at the door, and if action revenge is for you, then I expect you will enjoy it.

Probably best suited for the fans of this B-movie action genre, for those who just prefer violent good guy vs bad guys shootouts and that is exactly what you are gonna get.

The good: from 35 minutes onwards, it's basically contineous shootouts between Jason Patric and a Mexican drug kartel who has kidnapped his daughter.

The shootouts are okay-ish, but nothing terrific, especially since Jason Patric survives every hailstorm of bullets and kills everybody with a single shot himself. A bit laughable, but then again this is a B-movie. Treat it as such and it'll be a nice pasttime.

For those (like me) who are a bit impatient, skip the first 35 minutes, nothing much happens at the start...

Zero originality. Zero imagination. Did this have a script? You can't tell. Looks like an exercise in trying to rewrite and reenact a small piece of "Rambo: Last Blood".

Obviously low budget. Barely sufferable acting all-round. The lead's dead eyes are a monument to total lack of acting ability. The mother just had her first-born child kidnapped by a Mexican Cartel and is completely unfazed throughout the whole movie. Zero depth.

The usual shaky-camera to provide some fake tension.

As fake as the stellar reviews around here...

The only thing that makes this barely watchable is the fact that from mid-movie on there are always people shooting at each other in several different ways, although again in stupid ways: for instance, the sheriff trying to shoot bad guys with a shotgun from 50 yards, while the bad guys are shooting him with an assortment of military-grade automatic weapons.

There are also a ton of other stupid things, and goofs (like the extra van that you can only see in some shots in the car chase scene).

Bottom line: watch this if you are in the mood for a mind-numbing action sequence of people killing each other.