Close Range

 A generic name for a fairly generic movie. For those who keep an eye on modern, low-budget action, it stars Scott Adkins and is directed by Isaac Florentine. For those who don't know them, it's got a poster with a giant gruff guy with a gun towering over some hoodlums. There's a big sniper scope painted behind him, a smaller explosion sending a car flying (which never happens in the movie) and a helicopter in the background (which never makes an appearance).

 That's fine, it's aspirational; It feels like a movie that would have included explosions and helicopters, if it had the money to put them in. Truth-ish in advertising. Unless you expected Adkins to actually be giant-sized, swatting helicopters out of the sky and kaiju-ing his way through a bunch of gunmen; I can't really help you if that's what you got out of that poster, but I agree that would have been more interesting.

 The big (not literally) gruff guy in the poster is Colt McReady (Adkins), an ex-soldier badass who left the forces after disobeying dishonourable orders, but not before assaulting his (dishonourable, presumably) superior officer. Since then he's been doing some sort of (honourable, presumably) criminal stuff. An opening crawl explicitly compares him to ronin, which makes sense given his military background, but less sense when you realize the movie is very much going for a Western feel.

 We first meet McReady as he kills a few dozen people in a Mexican building while rescuing a woman (Madison Lawlor). It's an excellent running battle, well-filmed and featuring a fun, if slightly subdued (for Adkins's standards) choreography. 

 We later find out the woman is McReady's niece, who was taken by a cartel because her deadbeat father tried to screw them over in a drug deal. When they're back they, plus her mom (Caitlin Keats) try to run away before the inevitable cartel reprisal, but they're held by a corrupt local sheriff (Nick Chinlund).
 So the cartel boss (Tony Perez) and a dozen or so interchangeable henchmen arrive and lay siege to the house, trying to kill McReady and retrieve one of those convenient USB drives with critical drug business information.
 There are some flourishes, but... that's basically it. Close Range is a very meat-and-potatoes low-budget action movie: uncomplicated, unpretentious, kind of dumb, well-executed. The moment-to-moment action is excellent - gritty but with some acrobatic flourishes, and it's got a few ideas and memorable images, such as pitting Adkins's martial arts against a speeding SUV or a very painful-looking stab to the taint. Lots of people shooting through walls, too, a little-loved action trope I tend to enjoy.
 Speaking of which: The film features some wonderful, wholly practical squib and explosive work to give its frequent shootouts more heft; After what feels like a steady diet of middling CGI substitutions on that department lately, I can't overstate what a pleasure it is to get a full meal like this.

A pantry fight results in a rain of cheerios. As it should.

 As good as the action is, it doesn't flow very well; There's no drama to it, and most of the final third of the movie feels like people shooting the shit out of a house without hitting anyone for ages. It looks great, but the film feels oddly drawn out. That's exacerbated by some pretty egregious filler and some pretty weird choices: There are a few scenes early with the cartel where we get a hilarious amount of reaction shots of various thugs reacting to their boss chewing out and then murdering an employee, for example, and soon afterwards we're introduced to each one of these goons in turn, complete with a freeze frame and a helpful name tag. That'd be cool if they were interesting characters, or if they had even a tiny bit of colour, but that's not the case.
 Out of the great occidental action VOD director triad, Florentine remains a distant third favorite (after John Hyams and Jesse V. Johnson); He's got great technical chops, but I don't think I've found any of his movies convincing in the drama department after Undisputed 2. He needs a Michael Jai White-level presence to offset his corniness.

 The script (by Shane Dax Taylor and Chad Law) doesn't really come up with much to give the film any personality, either, and the dialog is often atrocious. Adkins is fine - this is hardly a challenge for him, as he mostly has to act angry all the time (his American accent sounds convincing to my ears, but we already knew that). The acting quality from everyone else varies a lot, unfortunately, but I guess that's not a huge strike against this sort of thing.

 Solid, in other words. A bit disappointing that it fails to gather any steam, but worth it for the different kinds of kind of low-key mayhem everyone gets up to.  

The Debt Collector

 OK. it's really bothering me now. I've watched this movie three times, and I still can't work it out; Who is The Debt Collector?

 Is it French (Scott Adkins)? Could be - he's our point of view character, a very British martial arts instructor and independent gym proprietor whom we meet as he greets a bunch of predatory douchebag rivals who are trying to run him out of his dojo. He deals with them in the best possible way: by offering to take them all on before he'll consider their offer. "Like in a martial arts movie" "Yeah, that's right, mate, like a fucking martial arts movie."

 He handily kicks their collective asses, but that doesn't solve the fact that the gym is struggling financially. To try and make ends meet, he convinces an friend and student (Michael Paré!) to give him a job as a debt collector. His friend doubts he's a good fit for it, and for good reason: French clearly lacks the moral flexibility the gig requires. But after some wheedling, and meeting the collections boss, he steps into the titular role. Or does he?

 Because therein lies the problem: On his first day, he's partnered up with another debt collector - Sue, an old, bleary-eyed and hungover veteran played by the great Louis Mandylor. At no point do they say "there can only be one!" and fight each other, nor does one recognize the other as the one and true Debt Collector. No crown or sash is ceremonially donned. It's maddening.

 The film follows them both as they do the rounds that first weekend. Sue's way of showing the new guy the ropes consists of dropping him into the deep end and hanging back to enjoy the fireworks; French, for his part, does relatively well - he's been established as a soldier as well as a mixed martial artist, so beating up a bunch of thugs is something he turns out to be surprisingly good at.

 Not that he enjoys it. This is a buddy comedy, after all, so the characters need to be at odds for a while before they warm up to each other. And the way it works here is that Sue basically takes the piss, always hanging back and letting French take on all punches; Meanwhile, French complains. He does come off as a little whiny, but what makes it funny is that all his moaning is justified.

 They're both great characters, and the actors have good chemistry together. Veteran VoD director Jesse V. Johnson is predictably good with the action, but more importantly for this movie his script (co-written with Stu Smalls, whom he'd worked with before on the excellent Accident Man) is funny, full of great lines and colour (and off-colour) detail. It's charming as hell, with a tone that remains breezy even as it gets into murkier waters.

 Because as everyone keeps warning French, debt collection's not for those with a conscience. And, to be fair, despite showing some scruples, he does get up to some pretty heinous shit over the course of the movie. While the film remains episodic, there aren't any major issues. But a plot eventually emerges (driven by a gangster played by Tony Todd) that will lead to places where he - and maybe even callous, burnt-out Sue - are not willing to go. Predictable, but satisfying.

 There are quite a few fights, and Mandylor gets to show off his boxing skills. But it's mostly Adkins's show, and he gets a real workout; The brawling is a little grittier than, say, Accident Man - it's way more grounded, and it feels like a few of the victories are very close -  but it still finds the time for someone to get thrown clear through a wall and quite a few comic beats. A climactic shootout, meanwhile, doesn't have much in the way of choreography or excitement, but it has an excellent use of squibs. Very juicy ones.

 One thing that cracked me up: there's this one guy who, when hit, makes a basketball-like sound on every impact. Cracks me up every time. Someone give the foley artist responsible a raise, please.

 Cinematographer Jonathan Hall captures the shittier corners of LA in all their dusty, sunny, neo-noirish glory, and the actors really elevate already good material; Adkins has never been better in the dramatic department, and Mandylor is a revelation: soulful, funny and with just the right mix of badass and vulnerability. In a just world, his part here would have made him huge. Johnson is a great director whose movies tend to look much better than their budget should allow, and this is no exception. There are even a few avant-garde like flourishes; They're slightly jarring, but after a few watches I now find the epilogue of sorts they lead to sweet and affecting. This is a really great fucking movie.

 French and Sue will return, improbably, in a very inessential sequel that nonetheless retains much of the charm. It doesn't answer who The Debt Collector is in this one. It's also nowhere near as good, but who'd refuse to spend more time in these guys' company?

One More Shot

 Only about half a day separates the events of One Shot from its sequel - just about enough time for Navy SEAL and lone survivor Jake Harris (Scott Adkins) to arrive at the Washington Baltimore airport from the massacre at the Polish black site, terrorist/critical asset Mansur (an again excellent Waleed Elgadi) in tow.

 Mansur remains the only person who knows the location of a dirty bomb he helped smuggle into Washington DC to be detonated during the State of the Nation address, so he's of high interest to Homeland Security and the CIA, who have evacuated and cordoned off the airport to take receipt of the prisoner.

 It's a neat transition and a good example of this series' commitment to being as close as possible to 'real time'. Presumably, the time missing was while Harris was sleeping.

 Jake is sidelined when a CIA bigwig (Tom Berenger) takes possession of Mansur. But as he's on his way out, he hears a bunch of mercenary types talking about killing everyone... so no R&R for poor lieutenant Harris; Soon he's in the thick of it again, shooting and stabbing fools as he tries to protect Mansur and his wife Niesha (Meena Rayann) from a shadowy PMO. In a simulated unbroken take.

 One More Shot is a little more ambitious than the first movie. The most noticeable upgrade is the location - a large chunk of London Stansted Airport, with a focus on the back rooms and utility passages. But it's also a more complex film, with more than a little bit of sub-Tom Clancy-esque intrigue, betrayals, etcetera.

 The always welcome Michael Jai White puts in an appearance as the main villain, but he's criminally underutilized. He does get a decent fight with Adkins, at least.

 I think I respected One Shot more than I actually liked it, but I do maintain it's a solid action B-movie. This sequel is every bit as impressive an achievement, but with the novelty gone, the more realistic but unexciting fights, the ineptitude of the enemy soldiers (seriously, they're about as effective as stormtroopers), a plot that gets bogged down with pointless scenes and lacks any resolution (yes, it pretty much ends on a cliffhanger)... I don't know, I'm just not feeling it at all.

 It's possible the movie's biggest get, the airport, might be its undoing; while the destruction in the first film's generic army base was modest, all the mayhem in this one barely leaves a dent on the airport's immaculate walls, except for one scene that's noteworthy for being an exception. There are shootouts in hallways with prominent, floor to ceiling windows, and not a single one collapses in a shower of safety glass diamonds. No walls are perforated by stray bullets, no rooms are brought down with explosions. It feels petty to complain about this on an indie action flick where such destruction might not be feasible, but it really robs the fairly generic firefights of any impact they may have had.

 (Also, I fucking hate London Stanstead, the most incompetently managed big airport I've ever had the misfortune to suffer, so it would have been cathartic to see it at least a little scuffed up; I may be biased on this).

 The filmmaking itself is pretty good - The constantly moving handheld cameras hang a little too close to their subjects at times during the fights, and there are a lot of whip pans (all the better to hide a cut) but there's an effort to keep the action legible; Must have been a nightmare to plan out. The choreographies remain understandably simple, but there are some good moves, one pretty impressive falling stunt, and the continuous take gimmick does add a lot of tension.

 Director James Nunn has a little fun with blocking, and my favorite scenes here creatively frame Harris as he skulks in the background while the guy the frame is centered on remains clueless. Living out his Sam Fisher fantasies.

 The videogame influence is huge - this is not something I normally like to bring up, as it's a lazy criticism (and near unavoidable on anything with extended takes), but it's incredibly obvious here: A little Splinter Cell, a recreation of an Arkham Asylum stealth takedown sequence... Oh well. Another unfortunate way it resembles videogames: dialog is still ropey, the plot is several shades of implausible, and the main character should have died several times over - yes, that's an action movie trope, but one that this supposedly more realistic film fails to make credible.

 At least the characters are likeable, with the Mansurs giving the film a little more humanity, and Adkins as always giving it his all; Incidentally, I got a chuckle out of how Mansur balks at the plot of the actual bad guys. He was going to kill thousands upon thousands of innocents, but he was going to do it for decent terrorist reasons, dammit!

  A sequel, whether it's One Last Shot or Carry On Shotting, is obviously planned; I do hope they get to make it, but hopefully they find a way to make it more exciting.

Castle Falls

 A good script (by Andrew Knauer) with a killer premise, starring two of the most likeable (and one of the most supremely competent) action actors around - in a fair world Castle Falls would at least have the sort of budget Gerald Butler vehicles get. But we live in a manifestly unfair world, so we're lucky to get a plucky, very low-budget video-on-demand release instead.

 The derelict Castle Heights Hospital is not just an eyesore in Birmingham, Alabama's skyline - it's also a reminder of the city's segregated past. Or that's what the mayor keeps telling the media, at least; the building is condemned and set to be demolished in three days, with a (modest) media circus set up to celebrate its passing.

 The old hospital is also the hiding place for three duffle bags with a million dollars each, hidden there by Lando, a drug dealer (Eric Gray) who stole the money from a rival dealer (Robert Berlin). Both of them have since been incarcerated.

 The film takes its time to get to the money, though; First it carefully establishes the two protagonists. Mike Wade (Scott Adkins) is a washed-up MMA fighter who came over from the 'original' Birmingham at a friend's request when he opened up a gym. It didn't work out. Any hope for contender status shattered, broke and homeless, he takes a menial job with the cleanup crew at the condemned hospital.

 Meanwhile, Richard Ericson (Dolph Lundgreen, who also directs) is a little better off - he's at least got a house and a stable job as a prison guard. But his daughter (Ida Lundgreen) has blood cancer; With the American health system being what it is, he needs to scrounge up four hundred thousand dollars because they deem the treatment she needs to be 'experimental'.

 As a director, Lundgreen takes a leisurely, fly-on-the-wall approach for this first half of the movie, letting the dramatic material breathe. This is obviously good for budgetary reasons, and their stories are a little bland for the runtime that's devoted to them - but it just about works because the characters are great and the script provides some specificity to their (very relatable) situations. Wade's MMA background also gives us a decent early fight (with Evan Dane Taylor), but... yeah, the first forty minutes or so here are all table-setting.

 Not just character introductions. The plot is set in motion by Lando, the guy who originally hid the money in the hospital. When he hears the hospital is about to be demolished, he reaches out to the only guard he trusts - Ericson, of course - and tells him about the money in exchange for protection from the guy he stole the money from.

 That guy's not idle, either: alerted by some corrupt cops of Lando's deal, he reaches out to his brother  outside the slammer (Scott Hunter) to assemble a team of gunmen, follow Ericson and get the money back. And of course, on the eve of the building coming down, Wade discovers the duffel bags while pulling apart some furniture. He hides it back and decides to come back to get it after his shift is done.

 So there you go: the stage is set. I'm not going to lie and say it doesn't drag at points (a piss-poor dream sequence is the worst offender in the padding out department), but it's a really cool premise, mostly well laid out. Almost half-way into the movie's ninety-minute runtime (and with a couple hours left within the movie until the building blows up) Wade and Ericson go into the building separately to retrieve the moolah, the latter followed by half a dozen armed thugs. From there it becomes a running battle - first between Wade and Ericson, then both of them against the rest of the world when they inevitably team up.

 There are quite a few fist fights, a couple shootouts (gunfights are risky due to the building being full of explosives) and a few tense chases as the principals try to sneak around the armed thugs. The action is good, not great - the choreographies are very grounded and a little slow, with Adkins doing the lion's share of the work. The developing dynamic between the two protagonists is great to watch, though, and the mooks hunting them get a little colour and some fun lines as well.

 Most of the movie's flaws are down to it being your quintessential DTV (or is it DTS now?) film; The sort where you can barely talk about production design, just a ready-made locations to shoot in (the Lundgren construction company posters were cute, but that's as far as it gets). Similarly, all the setup with the Mayor and the media watching the demolition from the sidelines doesn't really serve any purpose except to set up a (very funny) gag when someone falls out a window and no one notices; If there's any subtext to these cash-strapped people risking their lives for money while politicians and the media watch on from the other side of the street, the subtleties were lost on me.

 The script and the action also have a few hiccups: expect people to use an infinite ammo cheat, for example. The pacing is slightly off until the film hits its stride in the third act, and there's also a couple of crowd-pleasing epilogues I didn't care much for. Relatively minor issues, but noticeable.

 Lundgren's style is unobtrusive, after a couple of non-chronological flourishes near the beginning, and action-wise he makes sure we can see everything properly and doesn't do a lot beyond that. The film is divided into character chapters until it isn't, and a cheesy chronometer runs with the countdown until the explosion every now and then. All blood is digital as expected; I was hoping they'd run the shoot on a building that was scheduled to be demolished in reality, so they could use that on the film, but no such luck; A crappy CGI demolition it is.

 Still, it's a good old-fashioned, no-frills action movie. I'd prefer it to have a little more weirdness, a little more oomph, but it's still an extremely solid and likeable scrappy little b-movie.

One Shot

 One shot is a simple indie meat-and-potatoes military action movie with one flourish: it's shot in a (simulated) one take chronicling a very busy ninety-something minutes at a CIA blacksite prison island.

 A SEAL team led by Jake Harris (Scott Adkins!) is charged with escorting a CIA analyst (Ashley Greene) to retrieve Amin Mansur (Waleed Elgadi), a high-value prisoner who apparently holds information that might help avert another 9/11. They get held up by some bureaucratic back and forth, and just as they manage to take custody of the prisoner, a (literal!) truckload of mercenaries arrive, blow up the SEAL's extraction helicopter and start shooting up the place. Of course they've come after Mansur, too.

 The SEAL team and their wards hole up in one of the buildings while the mercenaries kill off most of the troops outside and free and arm the other prisoners. As the defenders run out of ammo, Harris makes an excursion out to fix communications. There's some infighting, as you'd expect, and an interesting tangent where Mansur insists that he's innocent - a victim of the war on terror - which adds a little unpredictability to the proceeds, but in the end it's not really important except to make him into an unexpectedly sympathetic figure. It's one of those movies where anyone can go at any minute, and things get remarkably bleak.

 The constant long takes mean that it sacrifices complexity to gain immediacy - the action consists of mostly pretty straightforward shooting and cat-and-mouse games, always moving relentlessly forwards. It gets a little exhausting, and seems to run out of steam as it carries on; Personally, I'd rather have a more traditional film where the choreographers don't need to worry about a botched move ruining a seven minute take - that way they could plan more elaborate action, but this works just fine.

 Compounding the issues with the action sort of running together, the military compound doesn't make for a very engaging backdrop - it's barely a step up above abandoned warehouse - but I guess it's pretty low-budget-friendly.

 The script (by Jamie Russell) is very simple; Dialogue's a bit hoary, but it fits its subjects. The fact that they're in a black site is treated very matter-of-factly; everyone is aware of it, knows what happens in them, deals. There's no overt ideology espoused here, and that's probably the best tack as it's really not what the movie is about. The film doesn't shy away from showing human rights violations, however, and the CIA analyst takes a dim view on the viability of torture (and is later proven right). So a little ideology seeps through.

 A couple of villains are provided (played by Jess Liaudin and Lee Charles), and the action does follow them for a while, but other than show that they're only in it of the money and use 'the cause' for profit, they're not very strong characters. Suitably badass and menacing, but not really memorable.

 Technically, it's a very accomplished film. Nothing as elaborate as, say, 1917, but then again, even though the budget here is the tiniest fraction of that, the takes seem to be a bit more seamless, and I only noticed a couple of the hidden cuts. Much respect for editor Liviu Jipescu. Despite the 'one shot' gimmick, director James Nunn counterintuitively plays down the technical aspects- it certainly doesn't really have any moments when it shows off. They could do it, just a little; they earned it.
 The low budget is noticeable and, as mentioned before, the action gets a bit samey, but its momentum is strong, and it's such an uphill battle that it remains engrossing until the end.

 Adkins doesn't really get a chance to show off his martial arts - it's not that type of movie, anyways - but he's very believable as a gruff, hyper-competent SEAL (says a guy with no experience in anything even remotely military), and his physicality and precise movements lend what brawls there are, and even all the running and gunning and cover-taking, a welcome edge. He's great, even if his main strengths go untapped.

 The rest of the acting is all over the place - Ryan Phillippe was especially unconvincing as a hard-ass superior officer - Or maybe miscast, I have a lot of trouble seeing him as a hard-ass anything. 

  Music comes courtesy of prolific videogame composer Austin Wintory. It's non-diegetic and also not his best work. The cinematography (by Jonathan Iles) is exactly what you'd expect: all muted colours, and the whole one-shot gimmick prevents it from doing much of interest. Some of the explosions are pretty dodgy CGI, but nothing immersion breaking.

 It's all right. A fun B-movie, and its style is both well-executed and provides the film with a distinctive hook it'd otherwise lack. I might not remember anything about it in a couple of years, but I enjoyed watching it.

Avengement

 A prisoner (Scott Adkins) is taken from jail, under heavy police custody, to the hospital where his mother lies dying. They arrive too late.
 As the title card takes up the whole screen, we hear the sounds of a scuffle and muffled groans... and cut to Adkins leaving an elevator full of fallen policemen and quietly escaping the hospital. To get his Avengement, you'd presume.

 And you'd presume right. An unspecified amount of time later he breaks into a pub full of gangster types, pulls out a shotgun, and holds everyone hostage. As he makes his demands and spars (verbally and physically) with assorted hoodlums, the movie flashes back to fill in the blanks of Cain's (groan) backstory and motivations.

 Avengement is the third and latest collaboration between Adkins, director Jesse V. Johnson, and writer Stu Smalls. This is a lot grittier than Accident Man and quite a bit more dour than The Debt Collectors. Its story is both simple and razor-focused on Cain's quest for revenge, its time-jumping organically incorporated into the dialog: segues followed as Cain recounts and remembers the chain of events that ended up with him going after his brother's blood.

 Everything gets explained away; Obviously, important things like who the hell this Cain character is anyhow, what he's up to, and why... but even minor details get filled in, ranging from where he got the shotgun to (in a pretty funny touch) an origin story for each one of his scars.

 And of course those asides include a ton of fights. Brawls, more like, don't expect any wall-running or acrobatics; While very well choreographed and shot, they're kept simple and (mostly) realistic. There's an appropriate focus on brutality and on the bloody aftermath of the attacks, a lot of wince-inducement to go with all the excitement.
 The low-and-dirty tone extends to the locations (which show London at its dingiest even in the obligatory nightclub action scene), the plot points (which include some really loathsome petty organized crime activities), and the acting, which has everyone at peak nasty bloke. I'm not an expert on British accents, but everyone seems to be having a lot of fun putting on their cockney.
 I had some trouble buying Adkins as a dangerous badass, but that's mostly on me for watching too many of his podcasts and interviews (the guy is as pleasant and good-natured as they come.) He's got a lot of makeup (scars) on him here, and does pretty well by the material despite my minor misgivings.

 It's not without its grace notes. Cain's relationship with his mum (Jane Thorne) is touching, and there's a redemptive arc which feels a bit forced but kind of welcome after being submerged under all this scum for more than an hour. There are also a few pretty funny lines here and there and a minor role for Louis Mandylor.
 I sometimes felt like it was trying a little too hard, but all in all it's a great little bit of genre meanness: lean, punchy, and badass. Cain describes himself at one point as a hardened, rusty nail, a great line that also fits the movie.