Walking Tall: Lone Justice

No more small town sheriff taking out the bad guys entirely on his own: this time help's at hand. No more solitary hero looking for revenge: instead there is a small family there to protect. And no more rednecks set on spreading fear and terror for reasonable profit: this is organized big city crime in all its nastiness.

WT - Lone Justice is a totally different ball game from WT - The Payback and it shows: it's shot and cut following other aesthetic and timing demands, the pace is very quick, the story doesn't take its time to let itself being told, the soundtrack leaves the C&W-style and goes for gangsta-rap (there are at least two remarkable pieces there, by the way). And yes, at least one scene is as brutal as they get.

However: like The Payback, Lone Justice is almost a genre-study, bringing all elements of this type of movie together, mixing them well together and keeping them in line with a steady hand.

The characters are believable - more than that: they are in fact so realistic, it makes you want to get involved with some of them every now and then (either to hit or comfort them, sometimes even both).

The acting is outstanding, although in this one Sorbo's performance is at times too much of a good thing; he is delivering such a terrific job of making Nick Prescott alive and understandable in all of the man's struggles, that the scenes without Kevin Sorbo sometimes come over as a bit flat, which - in all fairness - they are not: the ladies in the movie are awesome actresses, the supporting male actors all good and their play's showing lots of different nuances to keep you interested, and Haley Ramm is by far the most realistic teenager I ever saw on-screen. Still: Sorbo outshines them all and - as it isn't a solo for him, but an ensemble piece - at times it would have been better to reign him in a bit on the enthusiasm with which he makes the part his own.

Personally, I cared more for The Payback's relaxed, beautifully shot High Noon-approach than for Lone Justice's Miami Vice-style. But they're undeniably both honest-to-the-core, very impressing and highly entertaining action movies, straightly told, compelling stories about people one can relate to.

If one ever wondered what movies like The Bourne-trilogy would look like without the enormous budgets: Lone Justice is the answer. And that is a good thing.

Woke up this morning with a little headache from the night before.. had a free day and wasn't planning on doing anything worthwhile. So i started watching this film. This is just one of those movies that you watch on an off-day. It doesn't pretend to be much and it isn't.. still i enjoyed it.. sure the acting isn't topnotch, but when i looked at the cast i didn't expect it to be. The story is something you'll have probably seen a thousand times before and probably in better versions as well, but its got a nice pace.. i never once got that "get on with it" feeling. The action is quite enjoyable.. nothing special.. just enjoyable.. so in the end i think its good enough to kill an hour and a half.

This movie is just another average action flick, but it could have been so much better. When the guns come out they really needed some choreography help. Someone like Andy McNabb - who made that brilliant action sequence in Heat as they move up the street from the robbery - would have turned the dull action sequences into something special. Because the rest of the film was alright - predictable but watchable - better than you would expect from this type of movie. Then came the final scene, the show-down, the one we had been waiting for, but was like watching something from the A-Team in the 80s. They shoot wildly, nothing hits, and they run around a house trying to kill each other - same old, same old.

Good movies are original, some leave a message or touch you in a certain way, but sometimes you're not in the mood for that.

I wanted something simple, no thinking just plain action when I watched this one. It started of good and was quite entertaining, so why a bad review. Well in the end the movie lost it's credibility. The storyline wasn't that cheesy at all, the action was not too special but overall good, acting was OK, so more than enough to satisfy my needs. But all got ruined because things happened that were over the top, and it left me with a bad feeling. They should have put a little more effort in making everything credible and would have gotten a 7 in the "no thinking just plain action" category. So in conclusion if you know you'll get irritated because things are happening that seem completely illogical: don't watch! otherwise I'd say go ahead...

The action starts earlier as witnesses are gunned down by gangsters while watching a stunning show by Ramona (Christina Hearn in her only movie. More!) going on in the apartment across the street.

Kevin Sorbo follows up a long career as Hercules with a follow-up to Walking Tall: The Payback. He has a new girlfriend (Yvette Nipar) who is a federal agent that is to testify against the kingpin (Rodrigo De la Rosa) after the death of the witnesses. She has a smart 12-year-old daughter (Haley Ramm) that makes things interesting.

She survives and they try to hit her again in the hospital. Sorbo takes her to his ranch to protect her. Things get ugly ala Rambo II, and Ramona shows her torture-porn side, but then Sorbo shows his toughness.

Naturally, we have the big showdown at the ranch.

I have to get Walking Tall: The Payback.