Accident Man has DTVC favorite Scott Adkins as a hitman who makes his hits look like accidents. When his ex-girlfriend turns up dead, he discovers through her new girlfriend, Ashley Greene (Twilight), that one or more of his fellow hitfolks perpetrated the murder, and now he wants revenge. With the fellow hitfolk played by DTVC Hall of Famer Michael Jai White, Ray Park (Darth Maul/Toad/Snake Eyes), Amy Johnston (Lady Bloodfight), and Ray Stevenson (Punisher), it's going to be a fun 90 minutes as he solves the who-dun-it and takes all of his fellow hitpeople down in the process. Oh yeah, and it was directed by Jesse V. Johnson too.
If we're comparing this to other Adkins/Johnson collaborations, I put it behind Avengement and Savage Dog. That's not too bad though if you're putting it behind those, right? What hurts it a bit is the Adkins as a hitman origin story crammed in the middle, which deadens the pacing some. You can see how in Avengement they mitigated that by scattering the origin story across the rest of the plot. Beyond that, we get a lot of great action pieces, the kind you'd expect in an Adkins/Johnson film with the rest the names listed on the tin. Overall, I think this film is the goods.
Usually we start with the Hall of Famer in this paragraph, but because this is more an Adkins film than a Michael Jai White film, we'll discuss Adkins first. This is one of six films he did with Jesse V. Johnson between 2017's Savage Dog and 2020's Debt Collectors, and we've done the other five so far, so we can look at all six and rank them. I don't know that there are any out and out duds, but I put Avengement first, Savage Dog second, this third, Debt Collector and Debt Collectors tied for fourth, and Triple Threat sixth--but for a sixth, Triple Threat is still pretty good. In the 80s or 90s, that would be a nice string of success for a Gary Daniels or even a Jeff Wincott or a Frank Zagarino; but in the 2010s/2020s, to put out six movies in four years and not have any duds is unheard of. From there, you could throw in all the other films Adkins has done in that time, and maybe the record isn't so stellar--I'm looking at you Incoming--but anyone who has six good films in four years should be celebrated.
Speaking of celebrated, this is our first Michael Jai White film since he was inducted into the DTVC Hall of Fame. While this isn't so much a Michael Jai White film as it is a Scott Adkins one, the work White does here in a supporting role is no less integral. I also loved him getting paired with Ray Park, as the two had great chemistry. You could easily have a spin-off franchise from this featuring those two and it would work just as well. I think that's the true mark of a Hall of Famer at the DTVC: they play a supporting part in a film, but it's hard to not think of them as a potential starring role as well.
I mentioned all of the great names in this above, but if there's been one hallmark of the 2010s and beyond, it's been films that are full of great names that don't deliver on the promise of those names. How many times do we scroll through a streaming service, or happen across a title in someone's IMDb bio, and see how many people are in the film, only to discover most of them are wasted or just have a few scenes. To see a film like this that actually delivers on the names it gives us is a nice change of pace. Maybe this is a sign that the 2020s will make up for the mostly lackluster 2010s in the DTV world. I guess we'll have to wait and see, but I hope so. If it isn't, there's still plenty of stuff from the 80s and 90s I could go back to.
Finally, we've seen three people play the Punisher here on the site: Dolph, Thomas Jane, and Ray Stevenson. While I feel like Dolph was the best one, and Jane's was mismade through no fault of his own; and I am a fan of the Jon Bernthal Netflix series one; none had the potential from a DTV standpoint that Stevenson's had. Just imagining a series of DTV Punisher flicks with Stevenson at the helm is fantastic. My hunch is the success of WandaVision will lead Disney to make more short run TV shows to gain subscribers, but I still contend that the DTV market is an untapped resource for underused Marvel properties, like the Punisher. Add Johnson as the director of those films, and I think you'd have gold. They don't even need to replace the Bernthal TV show if Disney still wanted to develop that, it could be it's own separate thing, two or three DTV flicks. How sweet would that be?
And with that, I think it's time to wrap this one up. As far as I can tell, this isn't available on any streaming services. I don't know if it's worth a one-off rental, but if it's included in Prime or added back to Tubi, I say go for it.
For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6237612
And if you haven't yet, check out my novel Chad in Accounting at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!
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