Hounds of War

I was actually looking forward to watching this. Frank Grillo movies are decent for the most part and after seeing Isaac Florentine was the director I figured it would be on the lower budget side but with good/solid action sequences. I've always enjoyed Florentine/Adkins collaborations. Unfortunately this one fell short. The action just felt choppy and off the mark. It had its moments but all the hand-to-hand, well, wasn't good. Replace Frank with Scott Adkins and it most likely would have been better. It's entertaining enough but it's one I don't think I'd sit down and watch again. It's to bad, I really wanted to like it.

This is a bog standard B movie actioner with a surprisingly good cast. It is also pretty dark at times and cynical about politicians. The fight scenes are pretty good and the supporting cast is packed with minor martial artists from round the world.

Frank Grillo is always good value and Robert Patrick reprises his bad guy role from Season 3 of Reacher. He really does a good slime ball!

It clocks in at 90 minutes and is set in Malta which makes a change, although Accident man 2 was also filmed there so maybe they offer tax breaks. The only thing it lacks is Scott Adkins doing his terrible American accent to make it the perfect Friday night no brainer!

This isn't a bad film, but it's also not a good film. I don't really understand, as Issac has made a whole heap of fantastic movies. Ninja 2, Undisputed 2 etc, with this movie having scenes that go on for far too long.

The movie could easily drop 30 minutes and tell the exact same story. Scene for scene. The big fight scene in the middle ish of the movie.. sped up far too much. The pacing is off.

Again, it's not a bad film, but it's never going to be a great film. Shame. Frank and Rhona rock, as always, but that's not enough to save the movie. The camerawork is fantastic, great colour grading and the story isn't bad. Oh well. Next.

Despite the stale beginning and above average combat/action, the film has a unique storyline. There are some parts of the film that have some ups and downs, but mostly ups since Frank Grillo performed beautifully in some scenes during the film, whereas there are some characters that really need atleast a storyline for us to get a grasp of their presence.

I would have preferred the dialogues to be a little more enticing and fresh, but unfortunately some aren't that fresh. The overall pacing of the film is quite uneven, with some scenes dragging on while others feel rushed. This inconsistency can make it difficult for viewers to stay fully engaged throughout the entire movie.

However, the action sequences do provide some much-needed excitement and help to keep the momentum going. However, there are some scenes that are really entertaining and the action sequences are thrilling. All in all, the film is an enjoyable experience..

While the film is long winded in the exposition of locales at times, I think it's a solid B action movie. I'm not sure why anyone would call it trash as it's better than 90% of the stuff being made today. It has a solid cast, and the acting is on par with a film of its caliber, if not better. The action is well done and if it had any real fault, I would say it's the editing. There is a little too much filler to seemingly pad the runtime and I'm not a fan of starting a movie with a scene and then travelling back in time to see how the protagonist got to this point. It never works. I didn't like it in John Wick and I don't like it anywhere else. It's basically a movie spoiler shown up front.

Hollywood should stop being scared of making shorter movies. I would easily accept a 75-minute B movie with good pacing that kept you in the meat of the story.

Overall, this movie was enjoyable, and I watched it all the way through, which is more than I can say for a lot of other movies recently.