The Tracker has Dolph as a guy who is really good at tracking his prey. When his wife and daughter are killed by guys trying to use them to get him to do a job for him, he's naturally devastated, and naturally wants revenge. Years later he's called out to Italy because a cop there has intel for him. That cop stands him up at a cafe, because he was killed by the other dirty cops at his precinct that want to keep him from letting Dolph in on the truth. Now Dolph has to track down his family's killers, and only has a guy from Rome who was transferred there on assignment to help him.
This is a slow burner, with emphasis on the "slow." The tagline, "revenge never stops," might be true, but it also tends to take its time. I think the problem is, we kind of know who the players are and what they're up to early on, so we're really just waiting to get there, and it's a matter of how much Dolph we'll get in the process. And I don't know that we got enough, and I don't know that there were enough compelling characters outside of Dolph to make it work. We had the detective from Rome, whose wife is expecting, which is a nice compliment, but I think we needed more of him and Dolph together doing stuff to make it work better. On my Dolph list I had it at 59, and while looking back on it now I don't remember it being worse than some of the films I put ahead of it, but I think the lack of action without a plot compelling enough to make up the difference was its ultimate downfall unfortunately.
This is the third of three films Dolph had come out in 2019, the other two being Acceleration and Hard Night Falling. Again, I had this third among those three, and probably for that reason I gave above. There were some nice Dolph scenes in it though which really helped. According to IMDb, Dolph doesn't have anything slated for release in 2020, which would be the first time since 2008 that that happened. I think his mindset was, "Matt's just back from hiatus, he needs to get caught up on all my stuff, so I'll give him a year." While 2020 might have been the year we needed a Dolph film most, if that's his reason, I have to appreciate that.
I loved the shot of Dolph sitting in an Italian outdoor cafe in his coat and scarf. I tend to think of Van Damme as the most European of our action stars, but seeing Dolph like this reminds me how European he is as well, he just plays a lot more Americans because his English is so good. If the movie was going to go in the "less action-more suspense" direction, it needed to be more stylish like this, especially this kind of European stylishness. Sometimes style over substance is all it takes, and with Dolph, you've got plenty of style, just lean on it.
This one was directed by Giorgio Serafini, one of now four collaborations he's done with Dolph. Among those collaborations is Ambushed, one of the most egregious bait-and-switches ever perpetrated on the DTVC, but the thing is, we don't know how much that was Serafini, and how much perhaps it was taken from him and re-edited. The one I have highest out of those collaborations is Puncture Wounds, which is in the high 20s on my Dolph list. I have a sense that when Dolph does these films with Serafini, that he has a lot of input in them, so maybe they really work at the time they're making them, but something ends up happening in post with the finished product.
I couldn't think of a last paragraph, so I left you with another nice Dolph stylish shot for the movie. Going back above with the idea of making this more style over substance, I would just do 90 minutes of Dolph in a scarf and coat sipping espresso and beating people up. Maybe read Joyce by the seashore and then beat people up. Hit on a woman in a record store while thumbing through the jazz section, and then beat people up. Finish it off with a big gun while wearing a coat and scarf and sipping espresso. I'm an idea man, that's why I'm here.
If you don't have this via Epix here in the States, I think you need to pay, and I don't know if this is a pay one. If you can get it as part of your streaming package, that's a better way to go. 2010 Matt would have called this "The Ass-crack-er" and been really proud of myself. 2020 Matt has gotten a little softer and a little less proud of himself.
For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4142394
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