Diablo (2025)

This is one I planned to open the year with, but then decided I was going to open each month with a PM flick, so I pushed this one back a week, but the idea is it's my favorite action film of 2025, and I wanted to celebrate it as we start 2026. This is one we also covered on the podcast, episode 239 with Chris the Brain at Bulletproof, who has also covered this on the Bulletproof site; and I discussed it with Jon Cross on the After Movie Diner podcast, season 2 episode 22, where we also looked at A Working Man and Black Creek--and Jon's did a great write-up on it through the After Movie Diner Letterboxd account.

Diablo has Adkins as a mysterious figure who has snuck into Colombia to kidnap the teenage daughter (Alanna De La Rossa) of a major crime lord (Lucho Velasco). Despite how altruistic his motives might be, said crime lord puts out a bounty to get his daughter back. When one of the crime lord's henchman calls in Marko Zaror to get the girl back, all bets are off. Zaror's character is a psychopath with a metal hand and an immense amount of martial arts skills. Now he and Adkins are on a collision course to wackiness, and it's going to take everything they've got for either of them to prevail.

How many times do we see two names on the tin like Adkins and Zaror, and it delivers? And had this simply delivered it would've been great, and we'd have taken that and run. But this doesn't just deliver, these two guys give us multiple next-level fight scenes. It feels like for both of them, it's not about which of their characters gets to win, they see winning as delivering the best fight scenes together they possibly can, and as a result, we end up winning too. And as the As Seen on TV guys say, "we're not stopping there," because in addition to that, each star has their own number of fantastic solo scenes with stunt players who are all committed to making the best action movie they possibly can. This is what we as action fans are looking for, and what we often don't get anymore in the modern DTV space, but this is one of the few modern ones that I'd take the Pepsi Challenge with against the best of the Golden Age between the mid-80s and mid-90s, I thought it was that good.

We'll start as we usually do with our film's Hall of Famer, in this case Scott Adkins. This is his 33rd film we've reviewed, and I'd say after Avengement this is his second best (I liked The Expendables 2 better than this as well, but as an Adkins film I'd put this above it). I was going through movies of the 2000s to make a favorite DTV films of the 2000s list on Letterboxd, and it feels like a lot of them are Adkins films. Candidates like Ninja II, Savage Dog (which also has Zaror), Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning, Accident Man, the One Shots, it's ridiculous how much great stuff he's done over the past 25 years or so. To then say that this is the second-best among those gives you a sense of what I think of it. Adkins is going to be 50 this year, and I was trying to find someone who has a movie at this level at this age, and I can't think of it. Dolph was 52 when he did Command Performance, but that's not this. When you look at my top ten DTV stars of all time, I think I had him 11th, but with his record, I think he needs to go up to 8th, right behind Lamas at 7 and Dudikoff at 6, but depending on how this year goes, both of those two could be in his sights. (After that it's Daniels at 5, and Rothrock and Wilson tied for 3, so he has some work to do to crack the top 5.)

The other big performance is Marko Zaror, someone we've only seen a few other times on here, but anyone who's seen him in John Wick IV knows exactly who he is. And the thing is, while he plays a lot of baddies, here it's another level, absolutely chilling, think Javier Bardem in No Country for Old Men with next-level martial arts skills. He would've gotten the first paragraph after the synopsis, except Adkins is the Hall of Famer, and his performance was great too, but looking at what Zaror has out there to watch, I imagine we'll be doing some movies of his soon where he does get that kind of spotlight. Again, we know what he brings to the table, so it's not like we didn't think he or Adkins were capable of what they give us here, but to see it happen is another thing. One of my 2026 New Year's resolutions for the site should be to get more Zaror on here, so we'll see if I can keep to that.

There's a short list of DTV action directors who are getting after it right now. Florentine, Johnson, and I think we can add James Nunn too. Now we have another name, Ernesto Díaz Espinoza. Like Florentine, Johnson, and Nunn, who have done some great stuff with Adkins, Espinoza and Zaror have some other films out there that I need to check out. There was also a massive local stunt team that all did a great job on this who should be applauded as well. I've spent a lot of time talking about the fight scenes between Adkins and Zaror because they were so amazing, but the two of them each had some scenes on their own with the stunt workers that were all fantastic too. Especially the bar/restaurant scene, where Zaror's character was taking on one after another. My heart will always be for the Blind Beggar's Bar scene in American Ninja 2, but the one here is one of the best we've seen in a long time, DTV or otherwise, and that stunt team played a huge part in that.

Finally, this is something I mentioned on the podcast episode too, but during that fantastic final fight between Adkins and Zaror, right as a punch was about to be thrown (or if you're a Real Housewife of New Jersey, "being flown"), Amazon cut to a commercial. We don't pay for the ad free version of Prime, so I guess that puts us at their mercy, but I feel like they could find better places to insert their ads. When we were growing up, there were TV edits of movies that made sure breaks were in natural spots in the film, often when reels were being changed, but now we no longer have reels, and streamers like Amazon have so many movies to deal with that they just put the ads on certain time stamps and call it good. This movie also isn't available on DVD, otherwise I'd agree that that's a better bet, especially if my local library had a copy; and to be fair, as far as streamers go, Prime is on the better side when it comes to ads, it's just this one was particularly galling. My hunch is this is only going to get worse, and I guess if we want to watch movies like Diablo that aren't on physical media, we'll have to live with it--or as Johnny Rzeznik said, "live around it."

And with that, let's wrap this up. Currently Amazon Prime is the only option, whether that's as part of your Prime membership, or I guess you could pay $4.99 to rent it without ads. I don't know if you need to go that far, but for me this is one of the best action movies of the last 25 years, so if you haven't seen it yet, check it out. And for the podcast episode I did with Chris the Brain, that's episode 239 in the archives.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt27757546

And check out my newest novel, Mark in Sales, on Amazon in paperback and Kindle.

Special Forces (2003)

In my attempt to get a more respectable percentage on Will's Films that Have an Exploding Helicopter Letterboxd list, here is one from Isaac Florentine that we hadn't covered that also had an exploding helicopter, so we kill two bird with one stone--which sounds horrible, I'm not killing any birds. In addition to us, Chris the Brain at Bulletproof, Ty and Brett at Comeuppance, Simon at Explosive Action, and Mitch at The Video Vacuum have all covered this, so this is a Superfecta movie and then some.

Special Forces has Marshall Teague as the head of a special forces group that's called into a former Soviet Republic to pick up a young woman (Daniella Deutscher) who got in over her head there and is being held prisoner. So he gets his team (which includes DTVC favorite Tim Abell and Nitro from American Gladiators), they get in, go through some issues, then wait for the chopper to get them out. With 30 minutes left in the movie, it ain't so easy though. Said helicopter is blown up, most of Teague's team is killed, and he's captured. Will he and his remaining crew make it out alive?

This was a tale of two movies. The first hour was a cinematic version of that urban legend chain letter email your uncle sent you after 9/11, you know, the one about a Muslim convenience store owner laughing at the 9/11 news reports while watching CNN in his store, and the Pepsi/Coke distributor seeing it and pulling all his beverages out, something of course that never happened, but the first hour of this movie felt like it was made in the spirit of that jingoistic, racist urban legend chain email--and I'm probably not going too far to say that uncle that sent the email signed up for Facebook ten years later and made your life hell, only to be felled by the Delta Variant ten years after that because he wasn't vaccinated--RIP that uncle. Anyway, in that spirit, this movie hits all the tropes, yet does manage to eke out a few nice moments, like Teague and Abell's chemistry, or Scott Adkins popping in and having a few fun fights; but ultimately it is that movie, from the moment it starts, instead of American cowboys and Italian actors playing bad Native American stereotypes, we have American special forces and Lithuanians playing bad Arab stereotypes--which I guess they thought was too on the nose, so they moved the proceedings after that to a fictitious former Soviet Republic to soften the racism a bit while keeping all the jingoism. At that hour mark, when they get the girl and wait for the helicopter to bring them home, I'm thinking "what the hell are they going to do for another thirty minutes?" And that's when it gets ridiculous. We have Nitro from American Gladiators (Danny Lee Clark) running at enemy soldiers with a pair of grenades to take them out as some kind of valiant last stand, and if you asked me how I'd want Nitro to exit a film like this, you couldn't do it any better. Then we have a fantastic fight scene between Adkins and the baddie's second-in-command (Vladislav Jacukevic), which is the next level kind of stuff we want from Adkins and Florentine. And then the topper, the beautiful way Teague dispatches the baddie, the best baddie killing this side of Richard Lynch in Invasion USA. So where does that leave us? An hour of mediocre jingoistic retread material we've seen myriad times before with a few inspired moments, then a half-hour of fantastic ridiculousness. At least it's free on Prime, but I think if you're an action fan, you need to see those last 30 minutes.

That was a massive "what do I think" paragraph, so we'll tighten it up a bit as we discuss our two Hall of Famers, Scott Adkins and Isaac Florentine. This was early on in Adkins's career, but you can see where he was headed. It's as electric as you want from him, which, in that first hour, is just punching it up from the usual fare; but when the film turns for that last half-hour, he's there to deliver in this new over the top (Stallone style) world. For fans of his work, I don't know that it hits the heights of his best stuff, but it's still stuff you've gotta see. As far as Florentine, this is now 14 directed films for him on the site (15 depending on how you count Max Havoc: Curse of the Dragon), and while I don't know if I'd put this as a whole above any of those other ones I've seen (Assassin's Bullet has the great cast that I think edges this out), that last half-hour is as good as almost everything else he's done for my money. It looks like we have three more of his films, and then we'll have all of his DTV feature directed covered, so I imagine we'll get that done sometime next year, which'll be great to see.

We get the great Marshall Teague as a hero for a change, and as I mentioned above, I really liked the chemistry he and Tim Abell had, someone we're also used to playing more baddies. It was like buddy cop mixed with two career servicemen who have been through a lot together. I get too that as two former servicemen themselves, after 9/11 they'd have wanted to play characters like these as opposed to their usual baddies, but the thing I realized in watching them here, is it's their baddies that elevate the movies they're in to another level. Look at Teague in A Dangerous Place, something that should've just been PM Entertainment's Karate Kid, but Teague's baddie is so sinister it makes the movie more than that; and we've talked about Abell's killer in Instinct to Kill, one of the most chilling performances we've seen on the site. As much as I liked them here, they're showing us the old adage that anyone can be the hero, but to bring it as a baddie like they have is something else. The other thing is, when the movie turns at the hour mark, Abell's character is killed off, which was a shock, but when you get to Teague's end fight with the main baddie (Eli Danker), it couldn't be as ridiculous as it needed to be if Abell was there.

Fans of the site are probably used to seeing Malibu from American Gladiators on here, but this is our first time seeing Nitro, aka Danny Lee Clark. The role he's playing in this is almost like Ian Jacklin without the Ian Jacklin, if that makes sense. Like you like the idea of Ian Jacklin in this part, but you don't want all the Ian Jacklin that comes with casting him. For example, Nitro's beautiful death scene probably doesn't work as well if you have Ian Jacklin doing it, he would've given you too much Jacklin, and I don't think that scene needed more Jacklin, it needed to straddle that razor-thin line between full-on earnestness and parody of itself. I was looking up Clark's bio, and while he doesn't have much, he has this interesting vanity project called Looking for Bruce that co-starred Paige Rowland from PM's Christmas classic Riot, and the recently departed Gil Gerard. Unlike Nitro, who doesn't have a lot of credits, it looks like Gerard had more than a few DTV films, including one called Nuclear Hurricane that he did with his Buck Rogers co-star Erin Gray, and was directed by Fred Olen Ray. Here's to you Mr. Gerard, you were one of the great ones.

Finally, as I mentioned above, the second-in-command baddie looks like the lead singer of Incubus. We also had a member of Teague's team that looked like Bryan from the Backstreet Boys. I could spend this whole paragraph saying how crazy it is that all of that is 25 years ago now, and that it's like classic rock or something, and how old I think I am at 46--and to be fair, my back does a better job of telling me that than music from 2000 being 25 years old. I went back and watched some Incubus videos just to get a better sense of them before I wrote this paragraph, and found a video Rick Beato did from seven years ago breaking down why "Pardon Me" is a great song, and maybe he's right, but all I hear is the New Metal wall of sound guitar rifts, mixed with record scratching because adding a DJ to your band was a thing then. It's not that I don't like that song, but is it something that makes me want to fire up YouTube just to hear it? Or sing along when I hear "Drive" in the drug store. What we didn't realize we were seeing with the New Metal and the Boy Band stuff is the beginning of the end of music as we knew it. Throw in the I Have More Money Than You rap songs, which begat the auto-tuned I Have More Money Than You rap songs, and the death knell was there, like a toxic fungus destroying the banana crop, and the spread of this fungus was hastened by the consolidation of radio stations after the Telecommunications Act was passed under Clinton. Forget "Drive" being a drug store song, now we have bands who only make drug store songs. So while Adkins wins the battle against the figurative corporate music industry in this film, we ultimately lost the war.

And with that, let's wrap this up. You can currently stream this free on Prime and a few other streamers in the US. While that first hour is a bunch of well-worn stuff you've seen myriad times before, that last half-hour is the stuff that dreams are made of, so as a free streamer it's worth checking out. 

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0324038

And check out my newest novel, Mark in Sales, on Amazon in paperback and Kindle.

 

Take Cover (2024)

This is one that Will from Exploding Helicopter and I covered on the podcast, back on episode 213, as part of our Scott Adkins double feature with Accident Man: Hitman's Holiday, and I figured why not review it now and get in on the Snipetember festivities. In addition to us, Chris the Brain at Bulletproof Action has covered this as well.

Take Cover has Adkins as a mercenary sniper who, after killing an innocent person, wants to retire. If only it were that simple, right? His boss (Alice Eve) is okay with that, as long as he does one more job for her. Again, if only it were that simple, right? And sure enough, when they get into the hotel suite he and his spotter (Jack Parr) are staying in before they do their job, they realize they're sitting ducks for a sniper who wants to get them! Now this beautiful hotel suite is a death trap, with it's large windows that have a fantastic view of the city providing very little cover from the assassin's bullets. As luck would have it though, two young women were sent up before the shooting to keep our heroes company, and while one dies off right away (Alba De Torrebruna), the other (Madalina Bellariu Ion) lives and proves to be quite helpful. Will Adkins make it out alive?

This is another one of your classic we have enough material for a 42-minute episode of a syndicated action series, but not enough for a 90-minute movie. Adkins does the best Adkins he can, be he doesn't get a lot of Adkins moments; and then Alice Eve as the evil mercenary leader is wasted in a kind of Eric Roberts sit-down role--the fact that she has to do a wardrobe change at the end seemed like a big ask for her part. I think the biggest fail for me though was how our heroes would do things that seemed strategic, but had no strategic effect. "Everyone turn all the lights off so he can't see inside here." Great, we'll do that... except the sniper has the same ability to see inside and shoot at them? Then why did we go through all the trouble to turn out all the lights? Our closest thing to an Adkins moment came when a clean-up crew went to the suite to finish everyone off, and Adkins took them out, but even that felt perfunctory, as if the people making the film were like "we need something to break-up the monotony of this siege." Finally, we get Chekhov's silk bedsheets, where this idea of using silk bedsheets to make an escape is brought up a few times in the film, and pays off in this silly sequence of Adkins parachuting out of the hotel suite using said silk bedsheets. It tonally felt off, and I wasn't sure how I was supposed to take it. All that said, if this were a 42-minute episode of an action series, where maybe Alice Eve's character had been developed over multiple episodes before that, we'd probably call it one of the best episodes of the series, and maybe that's wherein the rub lies: the idea of this script being in mostly one location was too enticing to pass up, so they made the movie, even if they were stretching to fill the rest of the time.

We've now done 31 Scott Adkins movies here on the site, and many of the ones before it are high-octane actioners directed by some of the best in the business like Jesse V. Johnson, Isaac Florentine, and James Nunn. That means he's set a high bar here, and not every movie he does will live up to that. I can also see why he would've done this project. Like if I read this as a short story while on a plane or a train or something, I'd have been into it, and I'm sure that's what intrigued him too as he read the script. The other thing in his favor is his presence elevates this beyond a total stinker. He's still fun to watch, and he plays these mercenary/special forces characters well--even when he's parachuting out of the building using silk bedsheets, aided by a not-well-disguised greenscreen. Maybe all these Adkins free streamers like this are telling me I need to get it over with and pony up the $5.99 and rent Diablo. And they're probably right, but I want to wait it out because I know eventually it'll make it to a streamer, so in the meantime you'll have to settle on reviews of movies like this.

This is our first time seeing Alice Eve on the site, and after how great she was as Typhoid Mary on the Iron Fist series, and how the cover of this makes it seem like an Adkins/Eve actioner, I was disappointed that she only had an Eric Roberts-esque sit-down role. I know out of the Netflix Defenders series Iron Fist is considered the weakest, but one of the bright spots for me was Eve's Typhoid Mary, especially after the sautéed in wrong sauce version in Elektra (through no fault of Natassia Malthe). Even the Iron Fist version was kind of sautéed in wrong sauce though, because it changed a lot of her backstory. In the comics, she's one of the top Daredevil antagonists, and one of the top female supervillains overall, so the fact that in the MCU she only has this short moment has been disappointing--though to be fair, we haven't gotten any more of Elodie Yung's Elektra after The Defenders mini-series either. Throw in Taskmaster, who, even though he was a male in the comics, would've been great if that version of the character was played by Olga Kurylenko--but instead they give her this weird version in Black Widow who gets an even rawer deal in Thunderbolts*--and between those three, Typhoid Mary, Elektra, and Taskmaster, you'd have a pretty sweet Disney+ series. It's one of those things where, as much as Kevin Feige and his MCU get things right, they do still miss from time to time, but the great thing about comic book content is you can always fix it. If they brought Olga Kurylenko back as the comic book version of Taskmaster and just said "yeah, that version of me that was injured in the building collapse was a plant, while the real me was learning all these skills," I'd totally be okay with it, especially if it's to team her with Alice Eve's Typhoid Mary and Elodie Yung's Elektra.

Is it me, or is DTV filmmaking becoming more cynical? I mean, I guess it's always been cynical on some levels, and this trend of doing films that take place in as few locations as possible isn't so much a trend as it is something that we've seen for a long time. Is Fred Olen Ray converting a grocery store into the inside of a space ship for a space romp film any different from this movie leveraging one location to save money? Something about Ray doing it though seemed more fun, didn't it? The other thing I think is we see this the most from the most cynical of DTV producers, Randall Emmett. Bank robbery stand-offs, sieges in underground bunkers, or cat and mouse chases through small wooded areas, culminating in the worst of them all, whatever Armor was. It's like when he's in his office with his collaborators coming up with script ideas, the first thing they do is find a way to set it in as few locations as possible. "Hey Randall, our location scout found this great mansion in the country in Georgia we can use." "Excellent! Find a CW drama alum, call up Bob De Niro's agent to see if he wants to shoot a couple scenes as a local sheriff, and we'll write some kind of home invasion-turned Die Hard rip off." "Chad Michael Murray's agent said he's free. Can he hold an assault rifle though?" "Who cares, by the time we get there, we'll have already generated enough streams to make our money back." Maybe this movie isn't as crass as that, but it's in the context of that crassness that I'm watching it, and every misstep it makes reinforces that crassness, even if it's not trying to be that. I guess like when the kid comes late to practice and everyone has to run laps, Randall Scandal ruined it for everyone.

Finally, who doesn't love a good Chekhov's something other than a gun? Will actually has a list of them on Letterboxd, which you can check out here. Part of Chekhov's Gun though is the payoff. As the audience, when we see the gun in the first act, we don't just want it to go off, we want a dramatic death, or even a dramatic almost death. It's interesting, because in my writing I try to keep the principal in mind, while also adhering to Ernest Hemingway's counter that inconsequential details can have value too. In my novel A Girl and a Gun, the main character Justin is friends with an NFL football player who's close to retiring. To drive home how much of a toll the NFL is taking on him, while the NFL player and Justin are talking, I have a league official show up at his hotel room to interrupt their conversation because the NFL player needs to take a drug test. For me, the inconvenience of the drug test itself was the plot point, but I discovered after that readers expected the results of the drug test to play a part later in the story. Chekhov's anything is so ingrained in us that without the payoff it can be confusing, or even disappointing. That gets us back here to this film, and Chekhov's silk bedsheets. I don't know what kind of payoff I expected with that, but the silly shot of him using the sheets as a parachute to escape the hotel room wasn't it. I think I thought maybe he'd do an old Batman show and climb down. The fact that the payoff wasn't good though brought the film back to that Randall Scandal crassness I talked about above, making something they thought was clever turn into a detriment.

And with that, let's wrap this up. You can still stream this on Hulu, plus at one point it was on Tubi as well, so it may make it back there at some point. I think this is strictly for Adkins completists, or if you're struggling for more Snipetember picks. Also, if you haven't yet, check out the podcast episode Will and I did on this, 213 in the archives.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt28129054

And if you're interested, you can purchase A Girl and a Gun over at Amazon in paperback, Kindle, and Kindle unlimited. I always appreciate the support!

Accident Man: Hitman's Holiday (2022)

This is it, Scott Adkins official entry into the 30 Club! While we no longer display the list along with the 40 and 50 Club, it's still an exclusive club, and great that we were able to get Adkins in. This was also a film we covered on the podcast, episode 213, the "Scott Adkins Double Feature," which we did with Will from Exploding Helicopter. In addition to us, Chris the Brain at Bulletproof and Outlaw Vern have covered this as well.

Accident Man: Hitman's Holiday picks up where the first film left off. Mike Fallon (Adkins) is now living in Malta and still carrying out hits. To keep him sharp, he has Wong Siu-ling (Sarah Chang) as his Cato, attacking him at any moment. When his old friend Fred (Perry Benson) comes to town, looking for a lady that he met online, Fallon decides to have him help with his hits, which works great, until a hit gets put on the son of a local mob boss. Now said mob boss is holding Fred hostage while Adkins has to protect the son from all manner of assassins that are looking to claim the bounty--including his old mentor Big Ray (Ray Stevenson)! It's going to take everything in Fallon's bag of tricks to make it out of this alive.

This was a lot of fun. Some of the humor was a bit much, like when the mobster's son is covered in diarrhea after he passes a watch with a homing device on it through his system, but overall, a lot of this works. It's also a labor of love from Adkins, and that commitment shows, not just from him, but everyone else involved. The stunts are top notch, the fight scenes are electric, and the performances are exactly what you'd want to get us from action sequence to action sequence. I also liked that it was set in Malta, instead of set somewhere else and shot in Malta. That, combined with a lot of the UK inside humor (some of which I got and some I didn't), gave the film a further authenticity that got it over the goal line, especially when a movie like this needs to be made on a budget. It might be a little extreme in mixed company, and the diarrhea part probably isn't great if you're eating, but if you and some like-minded friends are looking for a fun actioner, this is worth it--again though, probably more just a beer movie than a pizza and beer movie.

I haven't seen Diablo yet, but when Jon Cross told me about it on season 2, episode 22 of his After Movie Diner podcast, it sounded like a candidate for Adkins's 30 Club post; but this one, which is a passion project of his, feels like an equally worthy one, because you can feel his desire for this to work in every scene. It's a 90-minute reminder of just how great he is, as if we needed it. Whenever we add a new member to one of the clubs, the question is, what's next for them, and in Adkins's case, we already have Take Cover and Incoming in the can and waiting to be reviewed. From there, once Diablo is a little cheaper to rent, or even better on a streaming service I already have, we'll cover that, and then I see another 10 or 11 more that need to be covered, so 40 Club is easy, as long as we get the reviews in. He's one of the best in the game right now, so it's good we can add him to the 30 Club finally.

This is unfortunately one of Ray Stevenson's final films, which is really sad, because his larger-than-life presence added an extra element to all the movies he was in, whether it was something like this, or a nine-figure-earning blockbuster like the Thor films. My two favorite roles of his have each been covered here, in Kill the Irishman and Punisher: War Zone. The moment Adkins sits down across from him while he's having his English breakfast, that presence is alive in the film, and even though he's not in it as much, you can sense him looming around the proceedings, so we know, no matter what Adkins does, he'll have to deal with Big Ray eventually. Technically Canary Black qualifies to be on the site, because it didn't make $1 million at the box office, so we could see him again. Either way, Mr. Stevenson, you truly were one of the greats, here's to you!

As a kid, the Pink Panther movies played on WSBK TV38 in Boston, usually on a TV show called The Movie Loft that aired movies when the Red Sox or Bruins weren't on. I absolutely loved them, and I loved that this film added the Cato element with Sarah Chang's Siu-Ling character. I think may favorite was Pink Panther Strikes Again, when the film looks like it's wrapping up and Inspector Clouseau is in bed with the leading lady, only to have Cato show up, hanging out over the canopy over the bed before falling in and a fight ensues. It was the hardest I'd ever laughed at anything to that point, and there haven't been many times since then that I've laughed like that. Nothing happened in this that was that funny, but it was fun enough to be reminded of it and have that element in the film. If Adkins does more sequels, hopefully they'll bring her character back for them.

Finally, we have a killer clown as one of the assassins. In real life I feel like professional clown is a noble pursuit, something very few are cut out for. Take me, for example, it's not one I could do, because I don't drive, and you need to be able to drive the small car. My favorite TV episode of all time, and one TV Guide called the greatest, involves a clown, the famous "Chuckles Bites the Dust" episode of The Mary Tyler Moore Show, where she can't stop laughing at his funeral. Similar to the scene from Pink Panther Strikes Again that I mentioned above, there are very few times I've laughed that hard. As of this writing, all of the episodes are on Hulu, so you can check it out, season 6, episode 7--and back then TV shows weren't serialized, so you don't need to have seen all the episodes before it to understand what's happening, you can just fire it up.

And with that, let's wrap this up. Currently you can get this on many major streamers here in the US, so if you have Prime without commercials, that may be the way to go; or if you don't, Tubi is the best out of the others when it comes to ad breaks. And also check out the podcast episode I did with Will from Exploding Helicopter on this one, number 213 in the archives. And finally, congratulations to Scott Adkins for his entry into the 30 Club, it was well-deserved, and the 40 and 50 Clubs await!

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9669176

Pick up my newest book, Nadia and Aidan, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!

Lights Out (2024)

This is one Ty and I covered back on episode 162 of the podcast, our "Dermot Mulroney Double Feature" episode, almost a year ago now, and I've been meaning to get it on the site as well. Beyond the Adkins factor, we've been meaning to get more Grillo on the site too--or fire up the Grillo, as we like to say here. In addition to us, Chris the Brain at Bulletproof has covered this as well.

Lights Out has Grillo as a former soldier who has just left the service, and is looking for work. After beating up Kevin Gage and some other ne'er-do-wells at a bar, he catches the attention of Mekhi Phifer, who gets him involved in the underground fight game. But it turns out Phifer's sister is into mob guy Sage (Dermot Mulroney) and the cop who's working with him, Glenn Close (Jaime King), because her abusive ex-boyfriend hid a duffle bag full of money at her house, and they want it back. Now Grillo doesn't just need to win some fights, but he needs to bring these baddies down, and to help him do it is old Army buddy Scott Adkins. Will he prevail?

This isn't horrible. It's directed by Christian Sesma, and his films have a higher floor, which helps in this sea of options we have on places like Tubi and Hulu. I think from a story standpoint, there's a lot going on, which hampers it a bit. The concept itself is one of those I'd say has enough material for an episode of a syndicated action show, and there are two ways to get something with that much material from 42 minutes to 90s minutes: you pad the hell out of it, or you add a bunch of stuff, and this one went for the latter. Still, the fights were good, Grillo gives us another solid lead, Phifer, JuJu Chen, and Mulroney were fun, we had the novelty of an Adkins appearance, plus Jaime King was playing Glenn Close! (More on that later.) Overall, this is a fun 90-minute time killer.

We're now at five Grillo films on the site, which isn't a lot when you consider how much DTV stuff he's done, but when you look at it all, he doesn't co-star with a lot of names like Adkins or Dolph, he tends to be the star power himself, which means we need to carve out specific reviews for him, something that I think will come more often as we start to finish off some of the old guard--though if they keep making movies at the rates they've been, it may not be as easy. We do have two others of his in the can right now, Black Lotus and A Day to Die, plus I'm looking forward to Hounds of War finally being available on streaming. What we get here is more confirmation that Grillo is a great lead in these movies, and with the baddies we've seen him play, he's someone who can slot into a lot of different roles and elevate a DTV film beyond its budget. The other interesting thing is it looks like James Gunn's DC reboot is utilizing him more than the MCU did, which is DC's gain and Marvel's loss, but also means it could be our loss as well if his profile starts to extend further beyond the DTV realm. We'll see, but in the meantime he has a lot of DTV back catalog for us to get to.

Mr. Adkins is at 29 now, so he's on the cusp of the 30 Club. I wanted to try and get him and Michael Jai White, who's at 28, in around the same time, but with three more Adkins films I have in the can to review, he might not only get in ahead of White, but end up a few films ahead of him in the process. This is a very small role, so had he already been at 29 I would've tabled this for a bit, because it wouldn't have been worthy of his 30th film. This is the second time we've seen him in a Sesma film, the other being a small, yet larger than this, role in Section 8, which also had Dolph. He's still pumping out a few movies a year, and even though some are like John Wick 4, which we probably won't review, most of them are DTV, so once he passes the 30 Club threshold, it won't be long before he's in the 40 Club too. Even with a small role, they all count the same, so the next time we see him here he'll officially be in the 30 Club.

Christian Sesma is a director who's been on my radar for a bit, especially for films like this that have a lot of names, and a look and feel that gives them a higher floor than most modern DTV. He's far down the list of directors whose movies we've done, as this is only his third, but I see a bunch that could be reviewed which could get him closer to some of the other names sooner. He has a couple with Michael Jai White, for instance, that are definite reviews just because they have White in them. The other thing is almost all of his stuff is on either free streamers or ones I'm subscribed to, so I can move through his filmography a little quicker. Compare that to Jesse V. Johnson, who I have 8 films left to cover, but I think only three of those 8 are on streamers; or Isaac Florentine, whose most recent is still rent only, while Sesma's most recent is already on Hulu.

Finally, the kids always talk about something not being on their "bingo card," and I'd say for Ty and me when we were discussing this, Jaime King playing Glenn Close was not something we had on our bingo cards. What was the mindset there? Was it "we can't afford Glenn Close, but this should really be her part"? Or did King say "I'm only playing this part if I can play her as Glenn Close." And she's a corrupt cop, so it's an Evil Glenn Close. It just added this bonkers element to the proceedings. When she was in Out of Death or Code Name Banshee she wasn't playing Glenn Close, so it's not like this is a thing she does all the time now. I guess as a one-off I'll go with it, and maybe it makes sense, because Close is such a great actor, who wouldn't want to emulate her--even if this is a bit All About Eve if she is.

And with that, let's wrap this up. You can currently get this on Hulu, which I think is a good deal. It has its flaws, but overall it's solid enough to get you to the church on time if you have 90 minutes to kill and you're looking for something to watch. And also remember to check out the podcast episode Ty and I did on this, number 162 in the archives, "Dermot Mulroney Double Feature."

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt16368898

And if you haven't yet, check out my newest book, Nadia and Aidan, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!

One More Shot (2024)

As we get Scott Adkins and Michael Jai White closer to the 30 Club, we had to do this gem from 2024 that featured both of them. This was one we covered on the podcast back in September with Rich Hawes of the DTV Digest, episode 176 in the archives, so you can check that out, and in addition to us, Chad Cruise at Bulletproof has covered this too.

One More Shot picks up where One Shot left off. Our hero is transporting Amin, the guy who knows where the bomb is, back to Washington, DC, but to get there, they fly into Baltimore-Washington International Airport (BWI) and plan to drive him the rest of the way, and on the ride, get the Amin's wife to convince him to tell them where the bomb is going to go off. A gang of mercenaries led by Michael Jai White have other plans though, and as Adkins is talking to his own wife on the phone to tell her he'll be home soon, he sees some suspicious guys walk through the airport that he just has to investigate, and sure enough, they're baddies. "Just when I think I'm out, you pull me back in!" Oh you're back in Mr. Adkins, will you be able to protect the asset and take out all the baddies?

This is a pretty sweet deal. It actually fits as a good companion to the first one, and there's talk of a third one coming too. A lot of action, well staged, well choreographed, and well shot. Adkins is great in the lead, White is great as the baddie, and Berenger is great as the grizzled CIA vet. There were some issues though too. It's a little long, I don't know that it needed to be a buck-forty-five; Alexis Knapp was good, but I don't know if she fit the role she was cast in; and the one shot element made for a more dynamic experience, but the fact that the camera was moving all the time was a bit much for my personal taste, where I like good still shots--especially of actors so I can get my screens! But those are more minor issues compared to an overall winner. If director James Nunn needed to make a sequel, this is what we'd want for that.

We're at 28 now for Mr. Adkins, so he's closing in on that 30 Club membership. What I like about him here, is this is a classic Adkins-led actioner, one where he isn't forced into action because one of his kids has been kidnapped, he's just a special forces guy who wants to go home and see his family, but out of duty he can't ignore it when he sees something suspicious. There's almost something Dante from Clerks "I wasn't even supposed to be here today" about it, but also that he knows he's the only guy standing between the baddies and success, so he needs to get after it. In terms of getting him to 30, we have Lights Out in the can already, plus a film called Incoming that I saw before that was finally back on Tubi. The problem is neither is a good 30th film post for him, so we can only do one or the other first, and then the other will need to be saved for 31.

Our other Hall of Famer is Michael Jai White, and while he doesn't have as big of a role, as his baddie duties are split with another baddie, what we get is good enough, especially in his fight with Adkins. This is 26 for him, which means he's closing in on the 30 Club too, the only issue is his two most recent ones that we could do on the site, MR-9 and The Island, are stuck on Starz, while his other newest one, Don't Mess with Grandma, isn't on anything yet. Still, he has some back catalog stuff we could get to as well to get him over the hump. Another thing worth mentioning is that his film from the end of last year, Outlaw Johnny Black, was our most popular post by far, and shows that between that and Black Dynamite, White brings something extra to the table that we love seeing. He gives this film some added muscle in a smaller role, but we love him in those leading roles even more, so hopefully I can get more of those up soon too.

Beyond Spiro Razatos, and guys like Chad Stahelski and Darren Prescott that worked with him at PM, I'm not as up on the other names in the stunt business as I should be, but Rich mentioned that the fight choreographer in this, Tim Man, and the stunt coordinator, Dan Styles, have an exceedingly great track record in recent DTV action, especially as part of this new movement of great DTV action coming out of England. I was looking at it, and Man has 11 films we've covered, and Styles has 8, many of which they've worked on together, and these are some of best ones we've had in the last 15 years or so, Avengement, Accident Man, I Am Vengeance: Retaliation, to name a few. We're talking not only the biggest names in action, like Adkins and White, but the best DTV action directors, like Jesse V. Johnson, Isaac Florentine, Ross Boyask, and in this film, James Nunn. Now you may be asking, "Matt, if you're the DTV Connoisseur, how do you not know this stuff already, why do you need Rich to tell you?", and that's a fair question, but that's why I have such great guests on the pod, like Rich Hawes from DTV Digest, because they provide great information that I miss, and that's why if you're not listening, you should be.

Finally, this took place at Baltimore-Washington International Airport, but was shot at London Stansted Airport. I've been to Heathrow and Gatewick before, the largest and second largest airports, but not Stansted--which means maybe I need to do a "research" tax write-off trip?--but one interesting thing I discovered when I looked into it, is when Obama and Trump flew on Air Force One to the UK, this was the airport they landed in, so it works in the "official government business" aspect it was used for in this movie. I also found out that London has six airports, which is double the amount New York has, the city that is second to it in overall traffic in the world, but it looks like one reason for that is because it's hard to expand Heathrow due to it's location. In America, we don't give a shit about people's houses when it comes to things like airport or highway expansion, especially people in underrepresented groups--we're seeing it here in Philly with the desire to build an NBA arena right next to Chinatown, even knowing what the arena in DC did to their Chinatown when they did the same thing. Hell, as Todd Liebenow pointed out on the Deadly Prey episode of the pod (175 in the archives), we even got an action movie out of just such an expansion, when Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson expanded and all the houses they were displacing needed to be demolished, they let the Cannon folks blow them all up in Invasion USA. Maybe this is how we get the third One Shot movie: Heathrow expands, they can blow up all the houses, and everyone's happy--except for the people who lost their homes, but small price to pay, right?

I kid of course, the last thing any of us want to see is people lose their homes over airport or highway expansions--or sports arenas like here in Philly. Instead, the thing to see is this film. It does help to have seen the first one, which is on Hulu, and then this one is Netflix, so you're bouncing between streamers, but if you have both, watch them both. And then listen to the podcast episode we did on this one with Rich Hawes from the DTV Digest, number 176 in the archives.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt27110516

And if you haven't yet, check out my newest book, Nadia and Aidan, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!

Hard Target 2 (2016)

It's October, which means it's time for Hall of Fame inductions again! We start with one who we'd kind of put off for a bit because he's younger, but as he's been creeping into the 30 Club, I didn't want him to get in on The Asylum Rule, so I figured we'd get him in now. This film is the last of the "Adkins Fest" podcast episode films to be reviewed, so good to finally close the door on that too. In addition to us, our friends at Comeuppance and Bulletproof have covered this as well.

Hard Target 2 has Adkins as an American (why always Americans with him?) MMA fighter named "Wes" who kills his best bud in the ring, and in his despair after runs off to Thailand to hide away in the underground fight world. That's when baddie millionaire Robert Knepper shows up and offers him money for a big fight. What he doesn't know is there is no fight, Adkins has been tricked into being the prey in a hunting game Knepper and some other rich folk are playing in Myanmar. Luckily as he's running, Adkins happens along a beautiful local woman (is there any other kind) and together with his martial arts skills, they decide to fight back.

This is neither good or bad, it just is, and "just is" usually gets you to the church on time in a nice, tight, 90-minute package; but 104 minutes it's a tougher sit. We've seen all this before, and often that's the idea--turn our brain off and enjoy some action for a bit--but with this kind of Most Dangerous Game story, 104 minutes turns into Most Dangerous Spinning Your Wheels, and the person most in danger in that scenario is us the viewer. That said, Adkins is great in the lead, Knepper great as the baddie, and supporting cast members Rhona Mitra, Temuera Morrison, and Ann Truong (as the beautiful local woman) are all good as well. Give us 88 minutes of this, and I think it would've worked better for me. Out of the four I watched in the Adkins Fest--the others being Castle Falls, One Shot, and The Eliminators, this was the one I liked least.

Usually when we talk about adding someone to the DTVC Hall of Fame, we say "it's been a long time coming," but with Adkins I think it's about right, just before he hits the 30 Club, but not too far before that. There was a point when he was pumping out 5 DTV flicks a year that we thought he may challenge Dolph for the most on the site, but he's since slowed up and is also doing more big budget things--plus foreign films, like Egyptian and Chinese productions. We also used to talk about him as being the next wave of great action stars, but really, he's closing in on 50 himself now, and the reality is as much as he has carved out a great career for himself, the Boomer and Gen Jones stars of the 80s and 90s never really faded out enough to allow him to be that next wave like we all expected. I think that makes his success that much more remarkable though, just through sheer force of will and talent he was able to carve out this name for himself when distributors were still looking for names like Dolph, Seagal, and Van Damme on the tin. It'll be interesting to see where he goes from here as he becomes a bit choosier on what projects he wants, but we still have a good amount of his films to cover, and it'll be fun on our side to see what he has next.

The Robert Knepper baddie is always there to push a film like this over the goal line. Though he was born in Ohio, he has the Euro Trash baddie down, and the moment you see him onscreen you know he's going to be up to no good, but up to no good while drinking an expensive bottle of wine and letting you know that he knows it's expensive. I first remember him in a TV movie called Kidnapped in Paradise, where he played a Euro Trash baddie pirate who kidnaps Charlotte Ross, and her sister Joely Fisher needs to employ a down-on-his-luck sailor to help her track down Knepper and her sister. Finding out all these years later that he was from Ohio was a shock, and even seeing him in this, it's still a shock, but as we're seeing with the SAG strike, finding work in the acting business isn't always easy, so for a guy from Ohio to make himself into a go-to Euro Trash baddie in DTV and made-for-TV movies, I say good for you, and for us watching, good for us too, because he makes these movies that much more enjoyable.

The original Hard Target might be my favorite Van Damme flick, and in no way did I expect this to live up to that, but a movie with that name and Scott Adkins should have been better. I was trying to think where this ranks among Van Damme DTV sequels to his big screen movies that don't have him in them. Right away, it's not better than Kickboxer 4: The Aggressor, that may be the best of those. Also, you can't beat Bloodsport 4 with Ben Franklin running a Dark Kumite in a prison. I do have this as better than the Cyborg sequels and Universal Soldier made-for-TV films; I'd also put it above Bloodsport 2 and 3, and definitely above Kickboxer 3. On the other hand, I put it behind Kickboxer 2 for me, just because I think Pyun did a better job on that one. That leaves us with Kickboxer 5. I mean, for the pure zaniness of that one, could I put it above Hard Target 2? First off, we have Mark Dacascos vs. Scott Adkins. I think that's a push. Then we have James Ryan vs. Robert Knepper, and as much as I love Ryan, I think we need to give the edge to Knepper there. Runtime definitely gives the edge to Kickboxer 5, in and out in 87 minutes. From a location standpoint, I think this one looked better, so I'll give the edge there. So maybe that's it, Hard Target 2 barely edges out Kickboxer 5 for fourth-best on the Van Damme film DTV sequels that don't have Van Damme in them list.

Finally, I saw recently where Adkins posted a picture of himself and his family at Disney World, and I thought "how cool would it be to bump into him there?" Of course, when would I ever go to Disney World again myself? The only reason I've ever been was because my mom loved the idea of taking my younger siblings, and I was dragged along. I have seen a celebrity there though under similar circumstances. In the early 90s when I was there, while we were taking a break, I saw late comedian John Pinette. He was with his family, I think maybe he had a niece among them that he had lifted up and was swinging around. Early teens me was starstruck, because I'd never seen a celebrity out in the wild like that before. My mom was on me to get some pictures of my siblings with some of the Disney characters, but inside I was like "shouldn't I be getting a picture of John Pinette?" And looking back, even as an early teen, I didn't want to bother him, so I didn't introduce myself, but I think if I'd had, at my age, he probably would've been receptive--how many 13-year-olds did he get in his career coming up to him and saying "I love your Chinese buffet routine!" Unfortunately Pinette left us in 2014, one of my all-time favorite comedians, and one of the great underrated Boston comedians, and while I never got to see him perform live, Adkins's social media post reminded me of the time where I at least saw him standing two feet away from me.

And with that, let's wrap this up. This thing bounces in and out of streaming services, so if you haven't seen it yet, just be patient and you'll get your chance. Adkins and Knepper are great, but for me it's a bit too long to work as a rental. Also as we're inducting Adkins into the Hall of Fame, you can go back to episode 101 in the DTVC Podcast archives to check out the Adkins Fest. He's definitely deserving of his inclusion in the Hall of Fame, and I'm glad we could get him in this year.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5241578

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Eliminators (2016)

This is one I'd wanted to do ever since I watched the two I Am Vengeance films with Stu Bennett--who is listed as his WWE name, Wade Barret, on the tin for this one, but either way, I just figured Adkins and Bennett would be great. The thing was, it bounced back and forth between free streaming and rental, and I kept missing it. Finally I was able to include it in my Adkins Fest (which was covered in a podcast episode of the same name back in June of last year, episode 101). In addition to us, Chris at Bulletproof has covered this as well.

Eliminators has Adkins as an American living in England (?) who kills two home invaders, and is held by the police in protective custody to potentially face charges. Turns out he was in witness protection there, as a crime boss that he took down wants him dead. The twist: the crime boss is his father in-law and grandfather to his daughter. To kill him, the crime boss calls in the best, Stu Bennett. At the same time, the crime boss is trying to get Adkins daughter, so it's a deadly game of cat and mouse. Will Adkins make it?

This is good enough to get you to the church on time I think. The whole Adkins playing an American in England makes no sense, because he's a Brit, but director James Nunn, who we also saw in One Shot, covered in the same Adkins Fest, also had him play an American, so maybe he learned that from Isaac Florentine and is leaning into it. Anyway, on top of that, we also have the same plot device of Adkins being a widower single dad who has a kid that gets kidnapped, though to be fair to this film, it looks like they did it first, but can it be helped that I'd seen Legacy of Lies and Seized before it? On the other hand, the action is solid, Stu Bennett is a great counter to Adkins's hero, someone that really presents a legitimate, sizeable obstacle for him to overcome, which I think is important for how an action film plays out, as we get some real peril for our hero. That unfortunately brings us back to how much fun it would've been if Adkins had been able to play a Brit to see them both interact as Brits, but I digress, sometimes you just gotta take a good actioner when you can get.

We last saw Mr. Adkins when we did One Shot back in April, and in that review we mentioned that his output had slowed a bit. To give you a sense, when this film came out in 2016, he had 7 other films released, while in 2023 he has had John Wick 4, and then a film called Lights Out is listed as in post-production and expected to come out this year. I think that's okay, because it gives us a chance to catch up for him. We're now at 26 movies covered, but by my count, we have another 8-10 we could do of his, include Hard Target 2, the last of the Adkins Fest ones I need to do. 36 wouldn't be a bad number, but looking back to 2020 when he was doing 4-5 films a year at a minimum, we thought he was in the running to catch Dolph's record, and now it's probable he won't catch fellow Brit Gary Daniels even, let alone Dolph. What we get here though, and what we often get when he's front and center on the tin, is a solid performance, which is something I always appreciate--I just wish fewer directors would make him be an American! Follow Dolph's lead in Castle Falls, or Jesse V. Johnson in every film they've worked together on, they get that part right.

Another great Brit in this is Stu Bennett, and unlike Adkins he's allowed to play a Brit. The only other time we'd seen him on here was in Ross Boyask's I Am Vengeance films, where he was fantastic, and I think he does as great a job here as the baddie. According to IMDb, he's been doing more for the WWE--which is where he goes by the name Wade Barrett, the same as his name on the cover here--but he does have a project in pre-production called Code Name: Azrael with Ross Boyask, which also has Gary Daniels, Don "the Dragon" Wilson, Cynthia Rothrock, Eric Roberts, Matthias Hues, and Dominique Vandenberg listed. How amazing does that sound? I know we're supposed to be talking about Eliminators, but I can't wait to see that movie! And as far as when we might see Bennett again, other than his WWE stuff and some TV appearances, he has one other film as far as I can tell, Fanged Up from 2017, so if that ends up on streaming we may make it happen.

As we mentioned above, this is now the third time we've seen the Adkins as a widower dad, which makes it feel like an American 60s TV show. I tried to find where it started, and I don't know if it was The Rifleman in '58, that seems like the earliest one, and then you had The Andy Griffith Show and My Three Sons that came out in 1960. Barbara Billingsley had to be worried every time her agent called--"Is this when they finally decide to kill me off and make Ward a widower too?" I was thinking it was the same as the adding a new kid device that 80s sitcoms used, only we also still had Full House that went the widower route as well, so it wasn't like the TV industry abandoned it entirely. Other shows employed it with adult kids, like Sanford and Son and Frasier, but it's not quite the same as a dad raising his kid or kids on his own. For whatever reason, in that tradition, people making movies with Scott Adkins have decided to use it as a plot device for him. If they're going to keep doing it, I hope at least one film has at least one scene where he's sitting in a den in a cardigan sweater smoking a pipe.

Finally, as we talk about streaming versus physical media, this film might be the best example of the struggle there. It's been yo-yoing between free streamers like Tubi and rental-only on places like Prime. As of this writing, it had just been clipped from Tubi after spending months on there. It's interesting, because some, like Abduction, which I haven't seen yet, seem to live on Tubi and never go away, while others, like this, you have to catch them when they're there. Physical media proponents would say this is why you need to buy it on DVD, because you'll always have it, and while I agree with that for the most part, my wife and I live in a small two-bedroom apartment, so we don't have the room for a massive collection, and I don't know that I need a DVD copy of this in a collection anyway. I know from J. Horton on one of his YouTube videos, often when a movie's been out for a while rental is the way to go, because one rental gets you more money than maybe 10 streams, and that makes sense. It's possible too that this was only on Tubi due to the bump they were expecting from Adkins being in John Wick 4, which might play into decisions on why something goes to Tubi for a short period or not. If that's the case, he's doesn't have a big budget production on the horizon, so other ones that I've been waiting to return like Incoming so I can get images for the blog may be shelved to rental for the foreseeable future.

And with that, let's wrap this up. While this is only available as a rental as of this writing, if you're going to see it I think it's best to wait for it to yo-yo back to free streaming. It's solid, but not enough to spend $3 on a rental when there are so many free things to watch out there.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4587366

And if you haven't yet, check out my new novel, Holtman Arms, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!

One Shot (2021)

This is one I watched last year while I was house sitting for my sister and brother in-law, during my mini-Adkins fest, which was featured in DTVC Podcast episode 101, aptly titled "Adkins Fest," a solo episode I did last year where I covered this and three other Adkins films. In addition to us, our friends at Bulletproof have covered this as well.

One Shot has Adkins as a Navy SEAL who, with his team, is escorting Ashley Greene to a secret military base where a suspected terrorist is being kept. The thing is, he knows about an attack that could kill thousands, so Greene wants to bring him back to the US and get him to talk. The problem is, he's already being tortured by Ryan Phillippe, who runs the base, and that has his fellow terrorists scared that he may already be talking. So said terrorists load up a clown car with hundreds of men, and lay siege to the base. Now it's up to Adkins and his men, against all odds, to fight through all these guys, get the terrorist to the chopper, and get him to the US. Will they succeed? Also, this film is done in all one continuous scene, made to look like one continuous shot, like an extended action version of the Spice Girls video for "Wannabe."

This isn't horrible, but I think it's hamstrung by the one shot device. In a short I think it could work really well, but for 96 minutes, we need cuts to other things happening. We also need cuts to individuals. Ryan Phillippe says something bad, I need a cut to Adkins's face to see him roll his eyes or something. I think it was clever the way they tried to mitigate that though through the one shot device, I guess I just don't know why I need the mitigation, right? Was there a contest to see who could do the best one shot action film? This is like the guy who wrote a novel without using the letter E. Maybe director James Nunn just wanted to see if he could do it, and he did, so in that sense it's successful. One of the other issues people had was the clown car aspect of a military truck showing up with some terrorists, and somehow that truck turns into hundreds of men. That's the kind of thing that's forgivable if you have some crazy PM Spiro Razatos action-directed 90-minute action fest, but here, where a lot of the action is just shooting at each other and we're hamstrung by the one shot device, I can see why people called that out--plus the one shot device in and of itself is saying the film wants to be taken more seriously, and as such something like a clown car effect will be given more of a side eye. Overall, I think this is a solid, fun actioner, kind of squarely in the middle of what you'd want from an Adkins flick.

As of this writing I still haven't seen John Wick: Chapter 4--almost 3 hours in the theater with no intermission means I probably won't see it until it comes out on streaming--but I am excited to see what Adkins does in that film. Here he's just the solid presence we've grown to know and love, and that really carries this thing more than the one shot device. I kind of pulled a fast one last fall when I reviewed Close Range during my Hall of Fame posts, only to be using it to induct Isaac Florentine, but now that we're at 25 films and counting for Adkins, I think his induction this fall is almost a fait accompli--I mean, do we want to force The Asylum Automatic Induction Rule at 30 posts for him? It's bad enough that we'll be doing it for Danny Trejo. One interesting thing is his output has slowed a bit. That may be due in part to the pandemic, but it makes it easier for us to keep up. For example, this is only one of two films he had come out in 2021, the other being Castle Falls. In 2020 he had 4, and in 2019 he had 5. And if he's going to be doing more big screen stuff like John Wick, it'll be even easier to catch up. By my count, I see about 11 films of his we could review on the site, which would put him near the 40 Club if we did them all. Again, probably a sign that we need to get him into the Hall of Fame sooner rather than later.

Director James Nunn has worked with Adkins before, on Eliminators and Green Street 3, of which I've seen the former, and I liked that film better than this. Yes, that one had the classic Adkins story trope, child kidnapped and he has to fight to get her back, but the action, especially between him and Stu Bennett, was great. And maybe that hurt this film more than the one shot device, the lack of a great baddie, because the one we had was sufficiently villainous bad, but he wasn't Stu Bennett charismatic bad, if you know what I mean; and to be honest, Adkins, though his presence carried the film, his character wasn't anything spectacular either, more just a one-note special forces soldier who's only better than your Chad Michael Murray or Jesse Metcalfe in a Willis Emmett-Furla-Oasis flick by virtue of it being Adkins. But maybe this is where I'm being hard on this movie and Nunn, because this isn't an EFO Willis actioner, it is more inspired than that, and being inspired is something we've seen less of over the last 15 years or so of DTV action. For that I think we can applaud Nunn, he's trying to give us something unique, and in that respect I think it worked.

We're now at 4 Ryan Phillippe films here on the site, which I hadn't realized we had that many, but as I looked at them, I remembered reviewing each one, I just needed to click on his tag for a reminder of them. Unlike Jesse Metcalfe or Chad Michael Murray that I mentioned above, Phillippe has made the transition from teen heartthrob to action guy much better, and he works well in the role he has here, dick federal guy giving Greene a hard time, but who can also get shit done. In looking at his IMDb bio, I see that he has some other stuff we can review, but not a lot. It doesn't look like he's leaning into these kinds of roles as much, and is doing things that are slightly bigger and more nuanced. That probably means we won't see him much more on here, but also with those few that this won't be the last time we see him. It'll be interesting to see if they work as well as he did here.

Finally, the clown car effect in this film brings up an interesting question: what can a DTV action film get away with as far as verisimilitude? I think really it all depends on how great the action is, how great the hero is, and how many iconic moments we have. Also, how serious are they trying to play it. The obvious one is the one guy beating up a bar full of baddies. We assume one guy, no matter how skilled, wouldn't be able to do that, but if the action is choreographed in a way that's exciting, we'll go with it. Another big one is the baddie who has endless resources, including an endless supply of goons, which is what we see here with the clown car effect. Sometimes it's ninjas, which work great because you can recycle stunt people for them and no one will know. In the 90s we always loved the beefy guy in a black suit who was just waiting for our hero to knock him out, or even better, spray him with uzi fire so he can shimmy to his death. The thing is, if you're putting out a schlock low-budget actioner, all of these things are seen as charming more than things we'd ding the film on when we're discussing it. When you put out a film that's all one shot though, you're looking to give the film a level of credibility that say a PM actioner or a Corman-produced Philippines romp wouldn't have, and as such, the clown car effect we get here is less charming and more something we'd give an eye roll to. When you want the film to be taken seriously on that level, it's more important to get those other parts right.

And with that, let's wrap this up. You can currently stream this on Hulu, so if you have that subscription you're good to go. I think this is worth checking out, especially if you're an Adkins fan. It's not his best of his recent ones, but it does the trick.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt14199590

And if you haven't yet, check out my new novel, Holtman Arms, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!