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
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