Misfire has Daniels as a DEA agent searching the mean streets of Tijuana for his missing journalist ex-wife, thinking the cartels, led by the great Luis Gatica, may be behind it. As is often the case, things aren't always what they seem; and as is also often the case, a beautiful young woman comes along to help our hero sort out all these aren't what they seem situations. Will our hero figure it out in time to save the day, or will the baddies prevail and our hero not make it out of Mexico alive. My heart is in my throat with anticipation.
This is listed at 28 on my Letterboxd Daniels list, and the note I wrote on it was "I think this is my favorite of the Daniels/R. Ellis Frazier films." That's probably true, but what does that mean? On the one hand, we have a pretty standard plot that drags in places, even for a 90-minute film, where even the plot twists are pretty expected. On the other, Daniels feels really invested in this, and it shows in the fight choreography (of which there weren't many fight scenes), and in the performance Daniels gives in the non-action scenes. The other thing is, as paint-by-numbers as this might be, it doesn't have the assembly-line cynicism of a DTV flick shot on the quick-and-cheap in Michigan or Louisiana with Bruce Willis slapped on the tin for five minutes of sleepwalk work, of which 3 is probably fake Shemps. I think that has to count for something, especially in the modern DTV ecosystem.
We're at 53 for Daniels, who is still firmly in second for most tags here at the DTVC. The problem is, somehow we lost him this year, with only two other reviews, both of which weren't real Daniels actioners--and with In Between, he was barely in that. I don't really know how that happened, because we have other films of his in the can to review, with this, City Hunter, and Astro all watched and waiting for me to do the write-up--plus Dancin' It's On, which fits more into the category of films like the other two Daniels films I've reviewed this year. Recently I watched the interview he did with Scott Adkins for Adkins's YouTube series on action stars, and he really gave more insight into what drives him in this industry. Yes, he is at his core a martial artist and action star, but he also looks for films that can stretch his dramatic acting skills, and I think that's why he'd gravitate to a project like this. On the one hand, we want to say "why Gary, just keep busting heads!", but on the other, with the oeuvre that he's turned out across his career, I think he's turned out enough great stuff that later in his career it's not the worst thing to want to push himself in films like these instead.
Vanessa Vasquez played the female lead helping Daniels out. Looking at her IMDb bio, she's done a lot of TV work, the biggest perhaps being the Hulu series East Los High. That show debuted in 2014, the same year this was released, and she really doesn't do any films like this after that. I get it, because unfortunately, as much as she tries to make this part more than the one-note pretty female costar, that's really all that's written here. It's like "how many scenes until she and Daniels hook up?", and from the standpoint of the actress looking at the script, there has to be a sense of "what do I do to make this more than just the pretty female costar?" I think the fact that she does try to be more than that one-note role helps the film, but I also have to wonder, had she known East Los High was coming, if she even would have looked at this script, let alone made this film.
And who do we have to blame for the one-note-ness? None other than the infamous R. Ellis Frazier, who with this post, finally gets his tag. I don't know if any of his films captures the R. Ellis Frazier dilemma better than this one. One the one hand, it is rather unremarkable and covering pretty well-worn territory; at the same time, there's an earnestness in his filmmaking that trickles down to the stars, so we have a Daniels who is also doing the fight choreography and is really invested; a Vanessa Vasquez who's trying to make more of a generic character despite the way Frazier wrote her; and of course, Ellis mainstay Luis Gattica as the main cartel baddie, just killing it in every scene he's in. It looks like his next film with Daniels, Repeater, should be coming out soon, so we'll see how that one looks.
Finally, back to Daniels, since it's been so long since we've reviewed a film of his like this, we should give him some more space on here. Back in September, I had the guys from Comeuppance Reviews on the podcast to discuss our top five Daniels films, and for the most part our lists were the same, but the overarching theme was that 90s DTV wouldn't have been 90s DTV without Daniels. The energy and athleticism he brought to the action genre in that decade, especially in his PM flicks, played a huge role in making that decade so fantastic. The problem isn't that Daniels is making more films like this now that aren't the high-octane actioners we loved from the 90s, the problem is there weren't more Gary Danielses to come in behind him and take up the torch. Scott Adkins is the biggest one, but after that, who else is bringing the same combination of action and theatrical presence to the screen the way Daniels did back then? When we think of guys like Michael Jai White and Mark Dacascos, they're closer in age to Daniels than they are any next wave. The other thing is though, beyond what Adkins is doing with Jesse V. Johnson and Isaac Florentine, no one else is making the DTV action the way they were made in the 90s, so how would we know if anyone other than Adkins would be out there as the next wave. Luckily we have things like YouTube and Tubi to allow us to go back and watch those gems, and we have Daniels to thank for a lot of those gems being gems in the first place.
And with that, let's wrap this up. This is available for free on Tubi, and I think that's your best bet. In my mind, this is probably for Daniels completists only, but it's not a "let's just get it over with" one for completists, if you know what I mean.
For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3207160
And if you haven't yet, check out my new novel, A Girl and a Gun, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!
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