Little Dixie

Little Dixie (2023) is disappointing on several levels.

As an action movie fan, I'm generally willing to watch any film starring Frank Grillo, Michael Jai White, or Scott Adkins - three actors who are capable martial artists and credible actors, but who have generally been limited to low-budget films and minor roles in major productions. My favorite Grillo film is Boss Level.

Little Dixie is my least favorite Grillo film. It's a low-budget production. There are no car chases, pyrotechnics, elaborate CGI, or large crowd scenes, but production values are adequate to its modest ambitions. There are a few gaping holes in the plot, which can be ignored if one is willing to sit back and enjoy the ride. However, the script is weak. Much of the plot is predictable. Some characters are duplicitous, but largely one-dimensional with no appreciable character arcs. Dialogue is a bit on the nose and heavy on exposition.

Grillo's Doc is not a sympathetic character. He's some sort of facilitator who works with a Mexican drug cartel and corrupt U. S. politicians, but we don't see this work. He transforms effortlessly into a ruthless, coldly efficient, unstoppable killing machine, but we never see what Blake Snyder calls a save-the-cat scene, other than a symbolic action on a pier near the end of the film. In Assassins, Stallone's Rath grants a victim's request. The assassin in Babylon allows one of his assigned targets to flee the country. In Inglourious Basterds, Waltz's Landa allows Shosanna to escape. Doc doesn't have a moment of kindness. To the contrary, he seems unaffected by the extensive collateral damage he causes.

There is no love story, only Doc's affection for his daughter Nell, but there seems to be little genuine chemistry between the actors. Nell isn't an interesting character and her only potentially interesting action is off-screen.

Chekhov wrote, "If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off." Doc purchases several firearms which he never seems to use, although he does use the item that is given special significance.

A huge distraction in many recent films has been the filmmakers' insistence on wearing their wokeness on their sleeves, usually to the detriment of the film. This is particularly incongruous in actions films which are typically far removed from woke ideology, and often feature concealed automatic weapons, enhanced interrogation techniques, extrajudicial executions, illegal wiretaps, facial recognition, muscle cars, private jets, and other politically-incorrect environmentally-hostile elements.

Little Dixie inserts several woke elements which seem so awkward and incongruous that one wonders if the filmmakers weren't deliberately or subconsciously railing against woke mandates.

Genre fans would expect Doc's ex-wife to be a matureBond girl, or perhaps a duplicitous femme fatale, like the dental hygienist in Boss Level. That the filmmakers would try to fill their diversity quota by casting a black actress is not surprising, but instead of a Thandiwe Newton or Zoe Saldana, they cast a shrewish soccer mom who doesn't look the least bit like the daughter and has no positive energy with Doc.

Rather than the typical strip-club scene, we have a scene at a gay bar featuring a singing competition among cross-dressing contestants, which devolves into a truly cringeworthy bedroom scene that ends predictably badly.

A minor character is a lesbian, while two others seem to be homosexual males for no particular reason, other than diversity. As the villains are Mexican drug dealers, there are numerous Latinos. But Asians seem conspicuously absent.

There are only a couple of brief martial arts scenes. Doc is supposedly some sort of manipulator who masterminded a huge smuggling operation. But we don't see him planning, negotiating, using the skills he supposedly has. Instead, he is a very blunt instrument. Against the backdrop of a modest production, the woke virtue signaling is especially distracting.

Why do we keep getting Frank Grillo movies? Who asked for this mediocre actor, who can barely move, to be an "action" star. This is just like every other movie with Frankie. Dull, phoned-in, little substance, no acting ability, and I presume, way over budget for what you get.

But, this movie is nothing new. There is nothing novel introduced here. It is the same as every other single action movie within the last 40 years; flashy. And that's all. There is no substance.

And, good lord, we have to sit through another bumbling attempt at reading lines by Frank Grillo. Stop already with Frank Grillo. He isn't an actor in any sense of the word except that people keep putting him in roles. He must be doing it for free.

There was an attempt by the rest of the cast though, so I won't rate it too low. They probably didn't know Frank was in it until it was already too late to back out. That is the only reason I see people working with him. See how they snuck him into the Avengers movie? I did too. That's why I think he's somebody's nephew.

As a fan of both John Swab's work as a director so far and Frank Grillo I was looking forward to this. It didn't disappoint. Little Dixie is in the vein of things like Too Old To Die Young and Brawl In Cell Block 99 a slow paced methodical thriller that has you on the edge of your seat for the majority of the runtime.

As I said before I've been a fan of Frank Grillo for a while and if this was the 1980's I think he would be a huge star. He possesses all the qualities a movie star should have. Great looks, great actor and is charismatic and likable. Aside from having a leading role in two of The Purge movies Grillo has mostly been relegated to B movies where he's either criminally underused or completely wasted. With the exception being his collaborations with Joe Carnaghan in Boss Level and Copshop who knows Grillo is a skilled actor and charismatic and likable and puts him front and center and knows how to use him properly. Little Dixie proves that John Swab is the only other director Grillo has worked with so far that knows how to use him properly. He's front and center here and his name is the only one on the poster. Despite the cast containing some other recognizable names in Eric Dane and Annabeth Gish they don't overshadow Grillo or move him to the sidelines. Beau Knapp also gives a good performance here as the terrifying cartel member "Cuco".

I reckon Eric Dane might wish he had stayed on his last ship after his stint as Governor of Oklahoma here ends rather more abruptly than he might have expected at the hustings. He cannot resist a good old gloat when his administration sends the brother of a Mexican drug lord to the chair. The uneasy truce that has existed thus far is now ended, and his assistant "Billie" (Annabeth Gish) and her fixer - and his wartime CO - "Doc" (Frank Grillo) have tightropes to walk whilst "Miguel" (Maurice Compte) decides how best to exact revenge. That involves his sexually ambiguous and brutal brother "Cuco" (Beau Knapp) who decides, quite cleverly, that he will kidnap the daughter of "Doc" and force him to do their dirty work for them... What now ensues is just poor, sorry. It's like a video-shoot 'em up game with bodies falling all over the place and little if any jeopardy until the last few minutes when, even then, the ending has precious little by way of surprise. The plot itself is pretty preposterous and the acting does little to inject any real sense of menace to this procedural, repetitive and over-long training video for would-be ten year old assassins. I wouldn't bother if I were you.

I'm not sure what writer, director and producer John Swab was thinking trying to knock-off a bunch of "already done and much better films". Although flawed, I still enjoyed two of Swab's previous films, Body Brokers and Candy Land, because they had what this film severely lacked, originality.

Filmmakers are supposed to get better at their craft, not worse, and this over-indulgent cliched nonsense is a slap to Frank Grillo, who deserves much better than this. Grillo was stellar at his lead role in Boss Level, and deserves lead roles in great films, not this nonsense.

Swab decided to add every cliche with lots of filler and very little substance within his cringeworthy sub-plots, that took away from the story instead of adding to it. I admired Swab's style in Candy Land, but in this one, his writing and directing was lazy and rushed.

The first two acts were suspenseful, intriguing, and had great flow and continuity, but as soon as the third act started - at the drag queen karaoke bar, it went off the rails. It was just all plot holes and nonsense, that lost all credibility with its lack of creativity and originality.

It's too bad, because the cinematography was excellent, as was the score, and all casting and performances were on point. But all that isn't enough to say the slowly paced 105 min runtime was an engaging and entertaining ride throughout the entire film, only the first two-thirds of it. So it's only a 5/10 from me, but could've easily been a 7 or 8 had that third act been better.