Released: 2018
Director: Ross Boyask
Rated R
Run Time: 93 Minutes
Distributor: Lionsgate Studios
Genre: Action/Thriller
Cast:
Stu Bennett: John Gold
Gary Daniels: Hatcher
Anna Shaffer: Sandra
Bryan Larkin: Marshall
Keith Allen: Dougie
Mark Griffin: Frost
This past September, the Stratford Picture House in London, England hosted The Fighting Spirit Film Festival. I have to say that I’m very grateful that I was able to attend that event. It was one of the most unique and exciting experiences I’ve ever had. I got to see a lot of short films and some big movies as well, which included The Karate Kid, Part II and Enter The Dragon, which was absolutely incredible. I also got to meet some folks behind some of the short films there including Jino Kang whose short film, Kid Fury: The Phantom Witch was part of the selection. It was phenomenal and I hope to go another one sometime in the future. During the festival, there were two movies that had their premiere at the festival: The Debt Collector, starring Scott Adkins and Louis Mandylor, and I Am Vengeance, starring Stu Bennett and Gary Daniels. In my post about The Fighting Spirit Film Festival, which you can click on the link here, I gave some brief thoughts about how I felt about I Am Vengeance. It was pretty positive, but now that I have the film on Blu-Ray, I want to go a little further into what I liked about the film and some issues that I had with it.
Basically, the story of I Am Vengeance is about a former British special forces operative who goes after a rogue special forces team after his best friend is found dead. That’s pretty much it. No super twists or anything that’s going to wrack your brain. It’s a good old-fashioned, 80s-style setup that serves as a vehicle for Stu Bennett’s character to go ape-shit on the people that killed his friend. Most action movies these days try to surprise their audiences with twists and pulling the rug out from underneath you. I Am Vengeance is not so pretentious. It’s an action movie and it doesn’t pretend to be anything more than that, and I find that surprisingly refreshing in the genre these days. Does that mean there is no character development in the film? Eh…there’s only so much. I mean, you’ve got the big guy on a mission and then you’ve got the bad guys who are only in it for the money. Like I said, the film doesn’t really waste time with all that fluff. It’s a meat-and-potatoes kind of action film that reminds me more of Commando than anything else, and that’s not a bad thing. I do like my complex story-telling in certain situations, but Vengeance isn’t one of them.
Acting-wise, Citizen Kane, this is not. That being said, I’ve seen a lot worse from bigger movies. Stu Bennett, who went by the stage name Wade Barrett in the WWE, makes his debut as a leading actor. The first time that I saw Stu Bennett in a movie was a little action flick that he did with Scott Adkins a few years ago called Eliminators, where he played an assassin. While I’m not going to see that he has the same kind of presence of someone like Dwayne Johnson, Stu is pretty good in his own right. He’s physically imposing at 6’6″, and he’s built. He’s infinitely better at the movie thing than someone like say, John Cena or Hulk Hogan. It looks like he feels more comfortable on a movie set than he does in the ring. He’s only been in three movies thus far including this one, but I think his big break is coming. Gary Daniels is another physical powerhouse in the film. Unlike Stu, however, Daniels is full-fledged martial arts fighter. While Daniels is definitely more of a martial artist than he is an actor, he can definitely bring the menace when he’s playing a villain. He’s fine as a good guy in most movies, but I really dig his bad guy roles, because they tend to be very ruthless, and his skills as a fighter add a lot of threat to those roles. Scottish-born Bryan Larkin plays Marshall, one of Hatcher’s more psychotic henchmen. This is another actor whose bad guy roles are pretty stellar. Overall, the acting is decent across the board. Nobody’s going to win an Academy Award, but they get the point across.
Let’s talk about the action here. Holy. Shit. This is a movie that hits really hard. Yeah, the gun-fights are pretty standard, but it’s the hand-to-hand stuff that really stands out. When I said that I Am Vengeance is an 80s-style action movie, I meant it. The fight sequences feature some of the most hard-hitting fights I’ve seen in a movie this year. I’m talking 80’s-style pugilism here. There’s not a lot of finesse to the action scenes, and that’s on purpose. It’s down, dirty, and mean. The only guy that has any real fancy footwork is Gary Daniels, but even he uses mostly his fists to do the talking. There’s no half-assed punches here. They all look like they hit and hurt. That kind of action really hasn’t been seen a great deal since the mid-to-late 80s. I love the throwback and the fight choreography is astonishing. Stu Bennett handles himself pretty well and sells the idea that his character is a serious military bad-ass. Bryan Larkin’s character is exceptionally brutal. I have to say, the fight between him and Stu’s character is pretty hard-core, but it’s the fight between Bennett and Daniels that’s my particular favorite. These guys just really go for it. Now, I do have some issues with some of the camera-work. While you can see most of the action pretty well, there are some moments where the camera gets too close to really tell who is hitting who. I’m not a big fan of that in most action movies. Overall, though, the action is rock-solid and straight to the point.
There’s another major issue I had with the film and that was with the character of Sandra, played by Anna Shaffer. Now, Anna did the best she could with what she was given, but the character was just so completely unlikable, it felt really difficult to empathize with her character’s drug-addicted plight. A lot of the other characters, you understand their motivations and why they do what they do, but Sandra needed to have her head put through a wall. Again, I have nothing against the actress. It’s the character that was poorly written. While I was impressed with the film when I first saw it in London, my second viewing has me enjoying it quite a bit more. It’s an old-fashioned throwback to when action movies were allowed to be hard-hitting and brutal affairs. I loved it. So….do I recommend the film? Absolutely, especially if you like 80s-style action flicks.
My Final Recommendation: This movie’s bad-ass. 9/10