Repeater (2022)

This is one where there really wasn't much excuse for why I didn't get to it sooner. There was an outside idea that I might save it for a podcast episode, but really, this was the most recent Gary Daniels flick, free to stream on Tubi, I should've made it happen. Finding out Art Camacho was the stunt coordinator made it all the worse that it took us this long to get it in, but at least we're making it happen now.

Repeater has Paul Sidhu as an assassin who has a job go bad in Bolivia, and has to take a high-risk open contract job as a result. That job involves taking out hacktivist Nick Moran, who has stolen data from an unscrupulous business man that's about to sell his business empire and retire. That businessman has a long-time hatchet man of his, Gary Daniels, also after Moran, and when his boss gives him the go-ahead, Daniels's new job is to kill everyone. On top of that, Painkiller Jane is Moran's bodyguard, and she and Sidhu have some history. Now the question is, will Sidhu kill Moran when he gets the chance? Or maybe he'll help him across the border so Moran can get help from the US Marshals.

This was pretty good, but I think it was a bit longer than it needed to be, and had the classic "hit man saves the lady of the night from being a lady of the night, and she nurses his wounds for him" trope that we've seen so many times. The thing here though was we didn't need it, it just weighed the film down. Sidhu as the lead holds his own really well despite the other names in this, and I'd like to see him in some other R. Ellis Frazier flicks; Daniels is great as a baddie; and Nick Moran, while we could've done without the French accent, is solid as the hacktivist. Also really liked the stunt work Camacho did, especially with Daniels in the fight scenes. The other thing was the film looked really nice, R. Ellis Frazier knows what he's doing at least as far as directing a film goes. The story just got away from them a bit, and in cliched ways that we've seen enough already.

Mr. Daniels is now on 58 films on the DTVC, second all time after Dolph. He just turned 60 this year, so when we finally get him into the 60 Club, he'll also join Dolph as the only other person on the site to have the distinction of having as many films on the site as years on the planet. What we get here is a solid-enough baddie, which worked if we just want more Daniels movies, but I liked the role he had in Bring Him Back Dead better, where he got to be the lead. If this performance shows anything, it's that Daniels can still lead a film if he's given the opportunity. The question now is, where do we go from here with him to get him to the 60 Club? Astro is next on the docket, unless The Gardener suddenly comes available, which I doubt it since it's been this long, but you never know. After that he has his religious films, all of which are on Tubi now, and of which we've already done one, so that leaves us two more of those. The 70 Club where Dolph is headed soon is probably not within reach, but 60 by the end of this year should be.

Third in line for number of tags is Art Camacho, who now has 49, putting him one away from joining Dolph and Daniels in the 50 Club. In talking to Ty from Comeuppance, we have a film lined up for that one, Chinatown Connection, because he stars in it. Here's the thing though: according to IMDb, Camacho also did uncredited writing work on another R. Ellis Frazier film, The Line, something we haven't tagged him for on here. With what happened with Don "The Dragon" Wilson and us having to remove tags from him after films were erroneously credited to him, it might be better to keep his count where it is for now, and we can add that in later if we need, so the next post will be still 50 for us. (Speaking of Wilson, in the trivia it says that the Ray Liotta role in The Line was originally written for him, and then totally rewritten for Liotta to remove the martial arts content. Wilson cites losing that role as a reason why he took the hiatus he did, something that had been a bit of a mystery to us, so interesting to find out that that was a reason why we lost him for about five years.) When we get to that 50th post for Camacho, we'll talk about his contributions to DTV action more, but it's also cool to see him lending his talents to something like this, which just takes everything up a notch. Also cool to see him back with Daniels for the first time since 1998's Recoil (if we're not counting The Line), which I have up as my favorite PM flick of all time.

As R. Ellis Frazier films are wont to do, we had a bunch of other people in this. First off, Nick Moran, traditional British crime film mainstay, is in this as the French hacktivist everyone is after. Why he had to be French--complete with the French accent--is beyond me. It's not possible to be a British hacktivist? You can rewrite an entire role for The Line so Ray Liotta can take Don "The Dragon" Wilson's part, but you can change the hacktivist's nationality when you get Nick Moran for is? We also have Painkiller Jane, aka Kristanna Loken. When I first reviewed a film she was in for the site, back in October of 2007, Painkiller Jane was still on the air, so me, being snarky, put that tag instead of her name, and it's stuck. This is only her 5th film on the site, so who knows, maybe if she gets some more I'll swap that tag over, but it's kind of fun that she's remained "Painkiller Jane" on here long after that show was cancelled. Finally, we have Corbin Bernsen as Sidhu's fixer. We've seen him two other times on here, both Frazier films, so I figured it was time to give him a tag.

Finally, an R. Ellis Frazier mainstay whom I love, and want to give some more shine to, is Luis Gatica. He's only in this in the opening scene, which is too bad, because I prefer to have my Gatica sprinkled in throughout to keep my interest, but I'll take my Gatica any way I can get it. Here he's like the opener in baseball, which, the purpose of the opener is to use a reliever to start the game, get through the other team's top of the batting order, and then hand it over to the a starter to take over from there. Like Paul Sidhu is good, but he's not great--at least not yet--but Gatica is, so let him open the movie, get us through the tougher bats, and then when Sidhu takes over, Gatica has already started us off in a good enough place. It was pure professional Gatica, absolutely killing it, and while, again, I would have preferred to see him in this more, I respect the role and performance he put in and its importance to the film. This isn't my first Gatica appreciation post when doing a Frazier film, so I was surprised I hadn't tagged him yet. We've remedied that now, this is film number 5 for him here. Here's to you Senor Gatica, you're one of the greats.

And with that, let's wrap this up. You can currently stream this on Freevee, Plex, and my favorite Tubi, here in the States. As this is a bit on the longer than it needed to be side, free streaming is the way to go. Sidhu is solid, you get the Daniels you want, with some great Camacho stunt coordination too. 

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7979692

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