I Am Vengeance: Retaliation (2020)

Ross Boyask, writer and director of this film, reached out to see if I would review it ahead of its release on June 19th. Based on how much I enjoyed the first offering, I was happy to give it a look. Let's see how it did.

I Am Vengeance: Retaliation picks up sometime after part 1 leaves off, with our hero, John Gold (Stu Bennett), still working on his own, only now in London. That's when his former boss Frost (Mark Griffin) finds him and recruits him for a mission: bring in his former commander Teague (Vinne Jones) who betrayed his team on a mission in Europe many years ago. There are a few catches though. One, he has to work with members of Frost's team; two, he has to bring Teague in alive; and three, there are other people out there who want Teague dead, not to mention Teague has his own mercenary team trying to extract him. Now Gold and his crew not only have to bring Teague in, but they also have to protect him. Will they be able to complete their mission, and survive in the process?

Like the previous one, I really liked this. It was a different paradigm, the first one being he's a lone man on the trail of vengeance, and this one he's working more in a group, which was something I liked. I think it's always good in a sequel to not do the same thing twice, and they didn't do that here. We also had more of Bennett's personality on display in this one, and the film overall had more of an offbeat feel, which I think made for a fun movie in a different way than how the previous one was fun. Just the same, we still had a solid action quotient, with some really good fight scenes. This movie definitely delivers and keeps the train moving from the first one. Well worth a watch for sure.

As I mentioned above, it was cool to see Stu Bennett's personality come out more in this one; we also still had that larger than life presence from the first effort, only now when it's combined with more than simply lone warrior out for vengeance, it becomes that much more enhanced. The only thing I would say about the team aspect of this one compared to him going it alone in the previous one, is we lose him for bits here and there as the team characters are developed, and with someone with a massive presence like that--similar to someone like a Dolph Lundgren--when they're not onscreen, it feels like something's missing. It's a small issue I had though when everything else was great.

A lot of this film feels like a natural progression from the first one, and the addition of Vinnie Jones as the baddie definitely fits that. This is the 12th time we've had him on the site, but usually his part is so small I don't add in a screen for him unless he makes a particularly memorable face or something. Considering the size of his part here, I felt I needed to give him his due and feature him in one of my three screens. In terms of a baddie, he's good here as just Vinnie Jones, but I do feel like we could've used a bit more of something from him before all this stuff happens, like maybe one early scene where he's making a deal and someone insults him, and he smashes the guy's head in a car door--or maybe he has a deal with a French guy and he gives him the "Gascoigne Treatment" in dispatching him after the French guy annoys him. The previous film did that with Gary Daniels and his gang, and it was a bit heavy, so I wouldn't want something that betrayed the offbeat nature of this outing, but maybe just something that fleshed out his baddie bona fides a bit more.

This film features what I think is perhaps the greatest call to arms in the history of cinema. Initially, Gold goes to find Teague with two of Frost's crew, and the rest stay behind; but when Gold and the other two run into difficulties, Frost decides it's time that he and the rest of the team to go in and support them. When he makes that decision, he looks at the team and says "fancy it?" I don't know that it gets more amazing than "fancy it?" Not "who's with me?" or "let's get the bastards!" or "let's go get our friends!" but "fancy it?" And I will say, I was all in, I would've run through a brick wall for Frost if I was on his team after that.

Among the other standouts, I really liked Katrina Durden as the daughter of one of Teague's former team, and Phoebe Robinson-Galvin as part of Frost's team who helps Gold. They had some excellent fights, both between the two of them, and against other characters. You could almost see a spin-off film featuring just those two in something--of course with Mark Griffin's Frost character back as well asking them if they "fancy it" to see if they're interested in taking on the mission. I also really liked Bentley Kalu as part of Teague's mercenary squad. His character was goofy in a lot of parts, but sufficiently badass enough too to make this offbeat actioner work. I'd say as a whole, the cast in this was great in making this work the way I think Boyask wanted it to go.

And with that, I think this is a good time to wrap it up. This will be available on VOD starting June 19th. I would also say, while you should go see the first one if you haven't yet, you don't need to have seen it in order to see this one and get what's happening, so there's no need to procrastinate. People are always saying "I just want a fun action movie," and I think this is the second time in a row that Ross Boyask, Stu Bennett, and crew have delivered that.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8972556

I Am Vengeance (2018)

This is one I caught recently when I was trying to get in as many Gary Daniels films as I could for my Gary Daniels list on Letterboxd. With that in mind, I now have a glut of Daniels flicks that I need to do reviews on, and I had this one slated for a bit further down, until the film's director Ross Boyask asked if I could look at a screener for the upcoming sequel, which is going to be released on June 19th. I figured I couldn't review the sequel without having posted on the first one first, so here we are.

I Am Vengeance is about a former special forces soldier, Stu Bennett, who has gone off the grid after a mission gone bad. When one of his close friends is murdered though, he needs to go back on the grid to find out what happened and make those who were responsible pay. That leads him to the small out of the way town his friend was living in with his family, which appears to be held down by a ruthless drug cartel. Even worse, that drug cartel is run by some other special forces soldiers, led by DTVC Hall of Famer Gary Daniels. It'll take all of Bennett's skills to exact his revenge, and free this small town from their oppressors in the process.

I really dug this one. A straight-ahead actioner with Bennett as a hero we can get behind, and Daniels and his crew as baddies we all want to see get taken down, which makes it easy for me to be invested. From there, the fight scenes worked, the action was consistent, and we had a good runtime of 92 minutes where everything was paced well. It seems like a lot of the best new action films, especially DTV action films, are coming out of England right now, and here is another example of a winner. I'm excited to see what the sequel has in store!

As always, we start with the film's Hall of Famer, which is our mustachioed Gary Daniels. This is now 47 films for him here at the DTVC, putting him only three away from joining Dolph in the 50 Club. One thing I like about Daniels is he plays a baddie as well as he plays a hero, which is important, because I'm so used to rooting for him as the hero that I need to find him just as despicable when he's the villain, and he's good at pulling that off. One thing I wish this did more of though was have him interact with his local surroundings. We very seldom see Daniels in a UK setting, he's usually in America or Thailand, so to have him in the UK and only spend his time in his mansion fortress was disappointing. Maybe if he'd gone out and gotten a steak and kidney pie, or swapped some slang with the locals, I don't know, something to take advantage of a situation we don't usually get with him. Still, that's a minor complaint about an overall great job he did here.

Stu Bennett is the true star of this, and he really carries it off, which is great to see. As a former professional wrestler, he has a massive presence, which can make him larger-than-life in scenes where he's not doing much beyond sitting at a table in a cafe and ordering breakfast. It's funny, in the world of DTV action leads, he'd be considered part of the youth movement, even though he'll be turning 40 this year, but when most of the names we're used to seeing on the tin were born in the 50s, being born in 1980 is young. He did a movie with Scott Adkins in 2016 called Eliminators, which I haven't seen yet, but if this is any indication, I need to check it out. Also can't wait to see what he does when he reprises this character in the next film.

Now we've seen a lot of wrestlers make the transition to DTV movies with varying degrees of success, and I think a big part of it is getting the right parts and having filmmakers put them in the position to succeed, which is where Ross Boyask's script and direction I think plays a big role in making this work. It feels like Boyask isn't asking anyone in this film to do anything they can't do, including Bennett, which allows him to flourish. In particular, for a stripped-down revenge actioner with a singularly-focused brooding hero, Bennett's character does have a good amount of charisma and personality. A lot of that is Bennett's talent, but it's also on Boyask with his script and direction to want that in the part, and often it's those little touches that don't seem like much that ultimately make a movie like this.

Finally, among the other performances, I really liked Anna Shaffer as something of Bennett's local guide. This kind of character is often there to cut the tension and provide some comic relief, but they also get put through the ringer a bit too, so it's not always an easy role to play, in part because they have to endure a lot, and in part because they constantly have to tread that line of being off-beat and playing things up for laughs, while not crossing over into being annoying. Again I think Boyask's script and direction plays a part in keeping things from crossing that line, but Shaffer does well too to manage a character that goes from being high on heroin in one scene, getting thrown around by a baddie in another, and being bound and gagged by the hero in the trunk of his car in a third, yet have the character come out of it all at the end and be likeable and someone we're rooting for. We've seen a lot of times where that character can be an annoyance and hindrance to the plot, which turns a review from "this was great" to a "it would've been great but...", so I feel like it's important to highlight those times when an actress like Anna Shaffer makes it work.

Because, in wrapping up, there was no "but" here, this was just a great one. Right now you can check it out on Netflix, which I think is the way to go. And on June 19th the sequel, I Am Vengeance: Retaliation will be out on streaming and VOD, so we should all check that out as well.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5885106