Close Range (2015)

As we wrap up the month of October, our last 2022 Hall of Fame inductee is our director pick, Isaac Florentine. This film is one I've had in the can to review for a long time, but had been putting it off because there were so many newer Adkins films I wanted to review; but with this being Florentine's induction post, I figured this was the chance to do it, as I thought this film really spotlights what Florentine does best. In addition to us, Comeuppance, Bulletproof, and Cool Target have all covered this as well.

Close Range has Adkins as a former special forces guy who is wanted by the military after he refused to carry out an order. On the run, he's like a samurai without a master, a ronin, a gun for hire. That changes when his sister (Caitlin Keats) needs him to rescue his niece from some drug cartel guys her horrible new husband has run afoul of. He does, but in the process erroneously steals a flash drive they have that contains all their cartel admin information, and they want it back--how can they do payroll without those spreadsheets? So they lay siege to the sister's ranch in Arizona, helped by local sheriff Nick Chinlund in his most Chinlund-iest. Can Adkins take all these guys down and protect his family?

Spoiler alert: yes. This is the high-octane action Florentine and Adkins are known for. Great stunts, great action sequences, well-shot, well-performed. The film clocks in at about 80 minutes, and within that 80 minutes there aren't many down moments, we go from action sequence to action sequence. On the other hand, there isn't a lot of plot here, and what plot we do have is well-worn territory, so there might be a question of "this movie had all this great stuff, but what are we left with?" I get that, and even further, we have an Adkins with an American accent, shaved head, and goatee over top of five o'clock shadow, making him pretty one-note despite the great action scenes. So in answer to that question, what we're left with is a straight-ahead actioner that doesn't let the plot, as paint-by-numbers as it is, get in the way of the action, with a hero who, while he may be pretty one-note, is still Adkins bringing it. I'll take this over a lot of DTV action films from the 2010s, and while it may not make any best of lists, it also doesn't do anything too egregious to upset us, which is important. For an evening time killer as a free streamer, this does the trick for me.

Usually we start with Adkins in this paragraph, but since this is Florentine's induction post, we should start with him. In an age where DTV is moving in more of a Bourne/Taken-Damon/Neeson quick edits approach to make the non-action lead look like an action lead, Florentine is one of the few out there who still looks to make solid, well-shot, well-performed, actioners. The knock on his earlier stuff is that he was too wedded to his sound effects--looking at you Bridge of Dragons--but he's always been true to the genres he came up in, notably martial arts, Japanese samurai, and Westerns, and this film has all of that. We generally think of him as one of two main directors who's doing great stuff with Adkins, along with Jesse V. Johnson, but Florentine has actually worked with almost every big name, from Dolph, to Van Damme, to Gary Daniels, even guys like Michael Jai White and Olivier Gruner. This is now 15 tags for him, but one was for his stunt work on American Cyborg: Steel Warrior, and another was him as producer on Boyka: Undisputed, which he couldn't direct due to the tragic passing of his wife. 13 director tags is third all-time, behind Albert Pyun and Fred Olen Ray. While he doesn't have the output to keep up with a Ray, or to probably ever catch Pyun, there are a few in the back catalog that I can still get to, plus it looks like he's made some stuff recently that's in various stages of post-production. His ultimate legacy to me is taking what we loved about 90s action, and staying true to it into the 2000s, 2010s, and now 2020s, at a time when the industry has been moving in another direction. Hopefully the industry will follow his lead and swing the pendulum back toward what he's doing.

Now to Mr. Adkins. I think when I had this listed for our Hall of Fame induction posts, people probably expected that it would be him getting this honor, but I was thinking he's not quite there yet. In looking at his IMDb bio though, he probably is, and I was just looking at his overall tags and not his overall body of work. We're now at 23 tags for him, but on top of that, I have five others I've watched and haven't reviewed, plus he has some others on free streaming sites that I haven't seen yet, so we could potentially get him to 30 next year. It sounds aggressive, but as we near having all of Dolph and Seagal's stuff up, there are going to be more openings for posts, and with his output, he'd be poised to take more of those openings. This film typifies what he brings to the table, solid martial arts and action sequences, and a strong leading man presence that makes him one of the best in modern DTV action. The one problem this has, and that many he does with Florentine have, is him speaking in an American accent. It's not that he doesn't have a good one, it's more that I'd rather he play a Brit, like he does in Jesse V. Johnson's movies. Maybe Florentine will see the light on that. One can only hope.

Chinlund. It doesn't get more Chinlund-y than Chinlund, and this film brings the Chinlund-iness. It's maybe not Chronicles of Riddick level Chinlund-iness, but it's pretty Chinlund-y. It's one of those things where a filmmaker says "my move needs a certain Chinlund element," they see if he's available, and if he is, it's an ingredient that's hard to approximate with anyone else. What it does here is gives us instant bad, corrupt sheriff with little-to-no backstory, perfect for an 80-minute actioner that wants to spend more time on the action than the plot. As an ingredient, I don't think he'd be MSG, probably more like Lowry's Season Salt, where you can sprinkle him in and add a flavor to the film without a lot of effort. We don't see him often here at the DTVC--I think the only other time was Felon--in part because bigger productions also want to add the Chinlund flavor to their films, so for Florentine to get him here was a nice change of pace, and again, that flavor we got by adding him really helped in an 80-minute actioner with minimal plot development.

 

Because Florentine tends to focus on the action in his movies, if his plots are thinner they tend to be trope-filled as a result, but I noticed he tried to mitigate one in particular: "the white man dispatching the faceless brown hoard." Here we had Adkins as your American hero, fighting a gang of Mexican cartel baddies. Only one year after this came out Donald Trump became president primarily by race-baiting white Americans on the prospect of the "brown hoard" coming across the border to take their jobs and commit crimes. Florentine must've been cognizant of that vibe, so he tried to mitigate it by individually introducing us to each of the Mexican cartel baddies as they were driving out to Adkins's sister's ranch. The problem was, it was a clunky device, and I don't know that slapping that on was enough to get past what is so embedded in the rest of the film, especially since this is a trope that's been established in American movies since those Westerns Florentine was influenced by were being made decades ago. The reality is, Mr. Florentine, they all ruined it for you, if you make a movie like this, you can't divorce it from that tradition. The better mitigation technique would have been to have Mexican characters who weren't cartel baddies, but that could've weighed down his film in ways no one wanted. Despite the fact that it may not have worked though, I think Florentine needs to be given credit for at least recognizing it was an issue, and trying to mitigate it.

And with that, let's wrap this up. Currently you can get this on most free streaming sites in the US, and I think that's the best way to go. I was trying to think where I rank this for Adkins films, and while it may not be a top one, it's also not anywhere near his worst either. For Florentine, this is another solid actioner at a good runtime with not a lot getting in the way of his well-shot and well-performed stunt work, and in 2022 when you're looking for something fun to stream on a Saturday night, maybe that's all you need. Congratulations to Florentine for getting into the Hall of Fame this year, you're truly one of the greats, and we look forward to what you have in store for us next.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3511596

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