Shrapnel

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.

In many ways, this is Rambo 5 on a budget. It starts out decent enogh. Jason Patric's daughter is abducted in Mexico. But he's a badass ex-marine, and won't give up on her without a fight. So far so good. Up until the first action scene, the writing and acting is pretty strong. The film spends time setting up the Cartel as all powerful antagonists, and they have corrupt cops on their side, too. The acting by the Cartel members and the cops is good. Jason Patric and his army buddy are good as well, but the actress playing his wife is awful.

The first action scene is set up almost like the finale of Rambo 5... and then it all goes downhill.

This film fails at what it wants to be. It could have worked as a gritty crime thriller, but it wants to be an action film. When you make an action film, you have to get the action right. The action scenes are amateurishly filmed, cheaply made, with all muzzle flares, bullet impacts and even the blood cgi. The destruction of the house looks fake, as do the impacts in cars and walls. It's an instant let down. Beyond that, the bad guys have the worst aim of any movie badguys ever. Even Star Wars Stormtroopers don't aim this badly. There are multiple scenes where Jason Patric is right in the line of fire at barely 5 meters apart, yet somehow every bullet misses. Once that first action scene happens, the movie loses all its momentum.

It's a pity, because the setup was done well. Gritty B-movies like this can work, see the recent Mob Land. But for that to happen, directors and producers need to come to terms with their budgetary limitations and work around them. It is better to have less action but done right than to have a lot of action done badly.

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.

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.

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.