Revenge of the Gweilo has Hill as Joseph Lucky, an ex-cop whose fiancee is murdered by some Asian organized crime assassins. Instead of letting the law take care of it, he takes the law into his own hands, and goes on a rampage full of martial arts and explosions, on the warpath for revenge. The baddies, led by the villainous Ishtar (Tritia DeViSha) will not go down that easily though. It'll take everything Lucky's got if he's going to take them all down and get the revenge he so desperately seeks.
This one was a lot of fun, and provided that context I needed to get more of the humor in Lady Terror. The humor in this one was a little more obvious, but also with more of an action background myself, I got more of what he was going for, especially with all the nods to Drive, one of my favorite films. To me, this is what Samurai Cop 2 should've been, and if they ever decide to make a Samurai Cop 3, Hill should be the one tapped to direct it. While this is a send-up of action movies, it doesn't hit you over the head with it, which is refreshing to me. It's like he's cleverly crafting a film in the mold of a Samurai Cop or Miami Connection, which is something I didn't think was possible, and I know Brett and Ty at Comeuppance have said you can't manufacture a cult classic. I think Nathan's pulled it off though, and for a free streamer here in the States on Tubi, it's definitely worth checking out.
A big part of why this works so well is, as funny or as silly as it might be in parts, Nathan Hill comes into this film with a cohesive vision of what he wants this movie to be. That doesn't mean things don't change in the process, or that elements he wanted to look a certain way he needed to compromise on due to various limitations that come with making films independently, but the film has a tone and a feel that's consistent throughout. Without that baseline, I don't know that any of this works as well as it does. Even if he did add things in later in the process, nothing feels like it was just dumped in. I think compared to Lady Terror, where he also had that consistency, but there were elements he was going for in that like the repetition of getting in and out of a car that didn't land as well for me, this one as a whole resonated better with me, perhaps because as an action fan I saw more of what he was going for. In either case, that clear and consistent tone is so important, and the fact that Nathan doesn't compromise on that means that whatever other elements he has to compromise on due to the limitations of working on a small budget don't hurt the overall enjoyment of the film.
As much as you need a great hero in an action film, you also need a great baddie, and that's where Tritia DeViSha comes in. Like everything in this movie, she needs to be funny, but not over-the-top or too in your face about it, and she does that here--again, keeping to the tone the film was going for. Going back to that comparison to Samurai Cop 2, where we had Bai Ling as the baddie, in that film she was expected to turn the dial up to 15 and just go, which was too much. Had that film gone with this approach to the baddie for her, I think it would've worked better. Samurai Cop 2 felt like a bunch of stuff was tossed into a blender, while here everything felt much more intentional, including Tritia's performance. We still got that a lot of what she was doing was being played for laughs, but she was also still very much the baddie, and really gave Nathan's hero stakes to overcome--which again, while it's all meant to be funny, we need things like stakes to hold it all together.
With an action film, it's always going to be judged by the action in it, and while this was played for laughs, it was fun to see the way the fight scenes were carried off. Nathan Hill is an accomplished martial artist, and unlike the mugger in Lady Terror, it looked like the baddies he fought in this were trained as well. Probably the most fun fight scene was the one he had with a sumo wrestler, which again married humor with actual stakes to make it really entertaining. According to the IMDb trivia, he almost broke his back filming those scenes, and I feel like you can see when that moment is when you watch it. I can imagine choreographing a fight between a sumo wrestler and a non-sumo wrestler probably presents all kinds of challenges, and there was a sense of danger in watching this, like at any moment Hill could be seriously injured, so I wasn't surprised to hear that he actually almost was.
Finally, the film starts with the Chinese New Year Festival in Melbourne, Australia's Chinatown. I'm always a fan of Chinatowns, and love going to the Chinatown here in Philly, or visiting ones when I travel. One thing that was cool about this shot here, is there's a 7-11, and the Chinatown in Philly has one near it as well. Growing up in Maine, the Chinatown we had closest to us was in Boston--though according to Wikipedia Portland used to have one too--but I never really went until I was older, so it's possible the first Chinatown I ever went to was in London. Anyway, the one in Melbourne looks really nice, and I'd like to visit sometime--though I feel like I should at least finally get to the one in New York before I fly half-way across the world to visit one.
And with that, let's wrap this up. You can find Revenge of the Gweilo on Tubi here in the States, and I think it's on Prime in the UK. Definitely one to check out, a great merging of comedy and action, it was a lot of fun.
For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4110978
Looking for more action? Check out my new novella, Bainbridge, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!
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