American Badger

When one person does pretty much everything on a film he better be really good at all of it. The acting was okay. So were the action scenes. The story concept was a rehash but one that has worked for other movies in the past. I am not commenting on the production values but they are about what you would expect from an indie movie. Where this movie really missed the mark is the writing. Blank paper could have been fed to the dog in the movie and he could have crapped a better script.

Feebile dialogue. Limp acting. Uninspiring story. Lacklustre setting and scenery. The only thing this movie has going for it, is the title, which draws you in with an expectation of something but you have to watch the film to find out, but even that failed and found myself bored senseless.

The American Badger is truly amazing. He singlehandedly kills about 70 hoodlums of various races and nationalities in this film, helped by the fact that his victims politely wait to attack him one at a time and have the collective IQ of a lump of coal. The plot is incoherent, the dialogue is often mumbled, the fight scenes are ludicrous, and the best acting performance is turned in by a dog. This piece of drek must be Canada's revenge on the U. S. for the War of 1812. You have been warned.

Granted, I had never heard about writer and director Kirk Caouette's 2021 action thriller "American Badger" prior to now in 2022, as I had the opportunity to sit down and watch it. So I had no expectations to the movie, nor did I know what I was in for here, aside from it being a movie that I hadn't already seen.

And when you notice that the lead actor is also the director and writer, then I have to say that I am starting to doubt a project. And thus it was with "American Badger", but I opted to watch it, especially since the movie had been given a 7.8 rating here on IMDb - in this very writing moment.

But I have to say that "American Badger" was not as great as the rating would otherwise indicate. Sure, the action sequences were fairly nice and definitely carried the movie a great long way, but the storyline was just bland. And I have to say that "American Badger" felt like a somewhat watered down version of "John Wick". So yeah, there was that whole thing here.

The storyline didn't have much appeal to me, and it was somewhat of a drag to sit through "American Badger", I have to be bluntly honest. And while the action sequences were good, then they could only do so much for a movie with an inferior script and storyline, and not really having much of an interesting character gallery.

I wasn't familiar with the cast in "American Badger", and that is something I enjoy in movies, even in "American Badger", despite the fact that the movie was not particularly outstanding. Well, I did recognize Zak Santiago, though.

My rating of "American Badger" lands on a four out of ten stars. There are far better and more memorable action thrillers out there.

Vanity projects seldom work even with Hollywood A-listers. When you have a Z-list director/actor doing his own voice-over on an ultra-low-budget indie ... well, let's just say the odds of a successful project are slim and none. And Slim just left town. Every low-budget fail is right there on the screen .. poor lighting, a sound track based on random noises from an electronic keyboard, terrible editing, and an incoherent script. Even the much-touted fight scenes are just a blur, a smudge, of motion that the viewer can barely see.