One Man's Justice

John North is a military instructor with a child he adores. When his wife and child accidentally become witnesses to a crime, they are murdered in cold blood. John North has one wish...revenge! OK, there is a bit more to it than that, but I won't give it away. "One Man's Justice" (or "One Tough Bastard" as its known as in the UK) is a well paced action movie with enough twists and creativity to hold your interest until the end. Visually speaking, director Kurt Wimmer doesn't have a particularly interesting eye, but he is talented enough to provide us with well choreographed fight scenes and effective, if slightly overdone performances. Bruce Payne reprises his role from "Passenger 57" here, albeit with an American accent. His performance borders on the camp, but it works. He IS A BAD GUY! At least, he wholly convinced me. Brian Bosworth is great too as the all American family man, who'll kick your ass to high hell if you ever cross him. The casting is perfect.

Keep in mind, it's a B Movie, but it's thoroughly enjoyable. It reminds me of 80's bliss such as "Commando". Fans of action movies should add this to their collection.

Brian Bosworth stars as a military man who looks to avenge the murder of his family at the hands of some random thugs in a convenience store hold up, however along the way there is something about super-powered guns and a street kid who teams up with the Boz to take down Bruce Payne and M.C Hammer. It's no secret that Brian Bosworth was a bust in the NFL (Not the biggest one, let us never speak of Ryan Leaf again.) however as an action star he has far more acting ability than guys like Olivier Gruner and Jeff Speakman. (His two main competitors in the B.movie market) After starring in the insanely silly (yet extremely fun) Stone Cold, One Man's Justice was his second movie and it's an adequate revenge-action film if not quite as fun as his debut. After this though the Boz's career went through a downward spiral with a series of worse and worse movies (peaking at Virus, in terms of badness) until finally making his comeback in the XFL (Where all the NFL rejects go) and finally having a high profile role in the Dean Cain mediocrity Phase IV. As Bosworth goes, he has some charisma but mainly it's Bruce Payne's typically hammy performance (Complete with nose-ring) and M.C Hammer's hysterical Nino Brown impression which makes this so enjoyable. Sadly M.C Hammer's theory that you can't touch him is proved wrong in this movie.

* *1/2 out of 4-(Pretty good)

A run of the mill revenge flick. It is basically a movie version of the hit game "Max Payne" but the story is told in a bleak and rather dull manner.

The hero goes around beating people up and teaching a kid that that is actually a bad thing to do. Pretty funny if you think about, but it manages to be half-way entertaining. Kurt Wimmer, in his pre-Equilibrium days, displays some directing talent, but this is nothing when compared to Equilibrium.

The undisputed highlight of the film is a great performance by Bruce Payne as a corrupt FBI agent. Complete with a 80's metal hairstyle and a nose ring, he makes one hell of a funny, though very improbable villain. His constant sarcasm and wit save this movie from being totally generic and uninspired. 5/10

Rated R: violence and profanity

The film started out with a boot camp situation with a drill instructor breaking in his new company of Army enlistments. All of a sudden there is a horror show going on in a local convenient store, where things start being turned into Swiss Cheese and lots of tomato juice. The Army instructor is Brian Bosworth,(John North),"Mach 2",'01,who winds up in a hospital for a few weeks and when he gets outside the door, all hell breaks loose. In this picture there is a very young boy who deals with drugs and is very street smart, which in today's society is being used all the time. These kids are under age and cannot be given hard sentences, so they do the dirty work of the Older Boys. Bruce Payne,(Karl Savak),"Hellborn",'03 gives an outstanding performance as an FBI agent who seems to like evil more than good. This is an entertaining film, but there is nothing you will remember about this film after an hour goes bye~! This film was called two names: "One Man's Justice" and "One Tough Bastard", whatever you prefer

I haven't made it all the way through this movie yet, but I have to say that this is one of the best terrible movies I have ever seen. It's an almost standard "good guy vs. cop gone bad" story, but the level of "bad" that the cop has going for himself is ridiculous. The bad guy is so bad that in the first scene that I saw him in he shoots up a room full of drug dealers, then someone else comes in to shoot him and he shoots them too. Blood all over the place. Again, standard fair for a movie like this. The best scene in this movie was where the bad guy is talking to an informant while holding an ice cream cone. The informant doesn't give him the information that he wanted so out of nowhere the bad guy kicks him in the crotch so hard the informant throws up. I hadn't really been paying attention to the movie up until this point, and maybe it says something about my generation, but I couldn't stop laughing at that. It's like the script writers went "OK, he's bad sure, we've shown him smuggling drugs and shooting people and being in general a terrible person, but what can we do to make it clear that this is the bad guy? I know! Let's have him kick a guy in the crotch really hard! BRILLIANT!" Of course, the other possibility is that the actor was a method actor and this was an improved action on his part. If so, that is the most brilliant director in the world to allow it to be kept in, since that's not what's happening, it's still a really odd action movie.