Sector 4: Extraction has Gruner as a mercenary (or "private military contractor" if you want to use the PC term) who takes a job in Sector 4, the most dangerous sector in Afghanistan, and he and his boys end up captured. He escapes, only to find out that his guys are still alive and being held there by Al Qaeda. His boss, Eric Roberts, is too busy chewing scenery to greenlight a trip back there to save them, so it's up to Gruner, after myriad training montages, to go back in and get his boys out. No man left behind.
This feels like a Gruner passion/vanity piece. I think whether you use the term "passion" or "vanity" determines on how you feel about it overall--or what you think of the fact that in some scenes Gruner's beard appears to have been touched up with Grecian Formula--I'm not knocking it, I have gray in my beard too, I'm just saying. It's not a traditional action film per se, it's more Gruner selling us on the fact that mercenaries aren't all the bad Blackwater stories we've heard; but also, that there is a toll that these things take on their families, and he's trying to reconcile that with his son who he's "leaving behind" as well while he does his missions, played by his real life son Nash Gruner. I think that story could have been compelling, but it was almost like they didn't want to go too far into it, and instead hit us with more training scenes. Calling them "montages" is a bit generous, I just didn't have another term for them, but they're too long for montages. The best analogy I can give is an old Family Guy sketch where Peter and Lois are watching Maude, and it's an extended version of the theme song, and Peter keeps yelling, "an then there's Maude!" These training sequences are like that, I kept saying "and next scene," but we'd reset and Gruner would go back to another drill. The thing is, with DTV, we don't know if those montage scenes were long on purpose, or if something else happened causing them to have to extend them to pad out the film. Either way, it's part of the overall vibe this film has, where you don't know if you want to call it a "passion piece" or a "vanity project," but again, I think how you see it will determine whether or not you'd like it.
Part of why this could be termed a passion/vanity project, is Gruner wrote the story, directed, produced, and acted in it. With that in mind, Gruner has done so many ones on here that we liked, and he is in the DTVC Hall of Fame, so if he wants to make a movie like this, I feel like more power to him. What does that mean for you as the viewer though? I think that's the framework you need to watch it in, you're not coming to this for Angel Town, Savate, or Nemesis, this is the movie Gruner wanted to make and the story he wanted to tell, and I do feel he's earned the goodwill to do something like this, it's just a matter of how much the elements that don't work get tedious versus us as fans supporting him in a project like that. It does straddle that line for sure.
Beyond the fact that this is a Gruner flick, as I mentioned above, the screenplay was written by one of our friends, Richard Pierce, and that more than anything is why I'm reviewing it--albeit much later than I intended! What he didn't tell us was he not only wrote the screenplay, but he also had a small part, and was associate producer. I think for all of us who do the kind of thing we do, it's a dream to be able to be involved in a film like this in even a small way, so to see him have this level of involvement was really cool. I feel bad that it took me over five years to finally make this review happen, but we're here now, and it's great to see it all. I promise the next time you need me to review something for you, it won't take so long!
One of the problems with the passion project/vanity piece, is that as a filmmaker, Gruner--or whoever does something like this--is tied to certain elements that might have been changed to make for a more compelling story. Take the aspect of the film with his son. It's his real son, and I think he wanted to add an element about how he's away from home a lot with his work, and he wants to fix that. The problem is, even if it is his real son, between the Grecian Formula and the younger ex-wife, it plays out the way we see in a lot of these films, where the lead is afraid to show his true age. The story we seldom get is the aging soldier who is coming to terms with the fact that he's not in his 20s anymore, and to that end, having an adult child who may have been born in 1990 and is now in their mid-20s, and Gruner as the father is realizing how much he missed in their lives; and maybe one of the guys he's rescuing is the young father of Gruner's real life son, and Gruner sees in the young boy the mistakes he's made, and that's the wrong he wants to right in addition to not leaving any of his men behind. The trope is too ubiquitous: lead born in the 50s/early 60s with girlfriend/wife born in the late 80s/early 90s. Get away from it, go deeper, have an ex-wife that was born the same year as you, and show us that aspect of life that we're all going to go through. As I said, I've got graying in my beard now too, it's not anything to be ashamed of, but I get why anyone would be just the same.
We haven't seen Eric Roberts since 2013, which isn't horrible when you consider from 2015 to 2019 I was on hiatus, but still, for someone with Roberts's massive IMDb bio, you'd think we'd run into another one between then and now, just based off the statistical probability. This is definitely in the realm of what Ty and Brett at Comeuppance call a "sit-down role," and while Roberts does stand from time to time, all of his scenes are in one location. There were moments where I even wondered if he shot his scenes with Gruner with Gruner, but when I saw them in the same shot I was disabused of that notion. People have pushed for Roberts to be in the Hall of Fame, and are often surprised to find out he doesn't have more films reviewed on the site. I honestly don't know why he doesn't have more films reviewed here either, but it's for that reason that he hasn't been inducted into the Hall of Fame. When I looked at his bio and the myriad films listed, one thing I realized is he doesn't do as many action movies, which we tend to skew more towards here; he also doesn't do as many like this with another established Hall of Famer. We'll see what we can do though about getting more of his stuff on here, because he's fantastic in his sit-down role in this, as he is in pretty much everything he does.
On that note, it's time to wrap this up. You can rent Sector 4: Extraction on Prime, or stream it for free here in the US on the Roku Channel. This isn't an action movie, it is more a Gruner passion/vanity project, and I think the way to determine whether or not you want to watch it, is to consider which side of the passion/vanity slash you're on. Either way though, congratulations to our friend Richard Pierce for his part in this. If anything, that was a great thing to see his name in the credits!
For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3099370
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