Renegades

I love London gangster revenge movies so I was looking forward to this one as it has some stellar cast members. Unfortunately it also has some bad actors and some poor writing. One of the worst cast members is married to the writer. Go figure.

Ian Ogilvy is, as always, a delight. The underrated Paul Barber is superb and Billy Murray does what he does best. So nice to see Lee Majors on screen again. However, Stephanie Beacham is far too old to be playing a serving senior police officer and looks as if she is on life support. Sothcott is hopelessly miscast as a Detective Inspector. She can't act and looks like a victim of a botched Botox procedure. And it's all a bit confused. She carries a gun but clearly nobody showed her how to use it and why would a DI in London be carrying a gun on a routine enquiry anyway.

The writing is clichéd and some of the dialogue is pathetic. I felt sorry for the actors who had to deliver it but hopefully they all had a nice pay day.

And that leaves Patsy Kensit. She has a strange role that tries to pull it all together and give the story meaning but she doesn't pull it off. The blurb say 4 old SAS soldiers get together but the lead goodies clearly says he was in the Royal Anglian and wears their beret. Such inaccuracy in the trailer info says it all.

Very disappointed.

Unstylised, dreadful editing, out of sync shoddy sound effects and unmemorable music gave this souped up sweeny the feel its budget was about £10.89p The whole thing was uncomplimentary; the thugs were made to be remedials. Thick as planks. Thugs in Heat or Narcos are given intelligence because it raises the stakes and give us intrigue. The script was boring and predictable; I was honestly guessing correctly was the next line was throughout.

This lot could have been taken from the bullies at my secondary school in 1978, not one charismatic among them. Even the fights were crude at best like they were slapped together after 8 pints of lager. To me the whole film looked like it was made by a bunch of drunks from start to finish. The saving grace were the night shots across London which looked good.

Really, all the marks I give for this are based around the fact it contains some people that I've always liked. Ian Ogilvy, Lee Majors, Danny Trejo, Paul Barber, etc. And in essence, I have seen a lot worse films, but if you're expecting too much, you're in for disappointment. The plot is net curtain thin, the b part actors and henchmen are really pretty awful and the editing and dialog are pretty poor at times. Also, the lady who played the investigating police officer called Moore was really awful, plus she looked like maybe she was made up to look really odd, maybe it was the intention of the film as I can't imagine anyone would choose to have things done to make them look like that on purpose.

However, in the end, it provided a basic level of entertainment and there was a element of fun, so if you're caught short for something to watch, there are worse things out there........probably....... somewhere..........with a bit of a search.

I only watched this movie to see what became of Lee Majors, that I used to watch when I was a kid, in The Fall Guy and The Six Million Dollar Man, two immensely popular series when I was young. I wondered what character he would play as an 83 years old actor. Not a very plausable one to be honest, a retired veteran that still thinks he can kick some a##. Like his old colleagues in this movie they're going on a revenge expedition, it's more laughable than anything else. Danny Trejo and Lee Majors have very small roles, their names were just been used to fill the movie poster and attract people to watch this mediocre movie. The acting is far below average, almost painful to watch. The producer or whoever does the casting must have a weak spot for women that had plastic surgeries as almost every actress in Renegades looked like an abomination. Unbelievable what women (and some men) are capable to do to look younger. A mission that 90% of the time is doomed to fail. There are so many examples now of failed procedures that you would think plastic surgery is a dying business but people continue to have body transformations in the hope of having that everlasting young look and instead they look atrocious. In Renegades there are plenty examples of surgeries gone wrong. Those actresses are now doomed to play in these kind of movies, b-movies or in this case z-movies as it's that bad. The producer was probably looking for cheap actresses as I can't see any of those actresses playing in a decent movie in the future, so the only roles they will get are in very low quality movies like this one.

Some of the casting choices in this movie are ridiculous. A mid seventies Stephanie Beecham playing an active senior police officer, and the actor playing the female detective pumped so full of fillers that she can't even deliver her lines clearly. She might actually be half decent if she could speak clearly and looked like she could be a police officer.

I didn't mind the low budget feel, I enjoyed We Still Kill The Old Way and this is in the same vein with similar older British stars, plush the bonus of Danny Trejo.

It's an ok film to pass 90 mins but it does make some terrible casting choices.