Sheesh, on the evidence of countless movies like this, Americans sure are dumb fuckers. This ridiculous porridge of run of the mill clichés is just – and only just -bearable watching*.
It’s like most entertainment these days: throw enough dollars at it, cast enough himbo/bimbo stars, and it might just work. It’s another aspect of what I call ‘the sliced white life’: employ skilled professionals to put it together, it might just stand up. It looks like bread… so surely it must be bread!? But don’t be fooled, it contains nothing of substance.
The plot driving bull is just your run of the mill McGuffin; corrupt politicians with cops ‘n’ hoods on their payroll murder the mrs of ‘the wrong guy’. You know, that former black ops dude, now just your average blue-collar unemployed guy, with the ninja killing skills. Oh, and his kill-kit, still stashed in a wall at his home.
But what is it with these heroically meat-headed dumbos? Why is it they can’t go after those serious hard-ass crims without first securing the safety of their family? Even after they’ve already killed his wife! He has the foresight to stash his kill kit. But not to relocate his family before going on a vengeful rampage. Dude, your priorities are shot!
Replete with ridiculous hairpiece, and undergoing a religious crisis of faith (like any upright American, he loves to kill, but that’s fine, like any upright American, he’s a Christian), Revolta’s Stanley Hill character goes all Arnie. He even looks like kind of like Da Dermïnadorrr! Working with an old buddy – I reckon they’re lovers; near the end buddy-boy says ‘I shaved your ass!’ (at least that’s what I heard) – they merrily butcher whole swathes of baddies, wisecracking their way to seriously psychotic serial-killer status.
Like Rambo, Last Blood, movies of this ilk, whilst mildly diverting in a sickeningly desensitised way, feed into that zombie-like consciousness (or lack thereof) necessary for a nation to be dumb enough to elect someone like Trump. Endlessly grunting and bleating about their individual rights to be better armed than a third-world dictators’ entire private army, all the while clinging to a personal pot-pourri of pre-medieval religious bollocks, mixed with toxically postmodern levels of cynical truth-is-relative poison. And to cap it all off, everything is marinaded in the ever more pervasive ‘everyone other than me is part of a corrupt conspiracy whose testicles, er… sorry, tentacles, reach into every part of society’ type paranoia, so beloved of the great unwashed.
Hill and his chum merrily widow and orphan hundreds of people**, from druggy street scum to the entire security team of the governer (but that’s ok, he’s corrupt), causing collateral damage that in real world terms would include large numbers of innocent bystanders at numerous locations.
In more ‘up close and personal’ terms, in addition to his wife, the dead also include Hills’ daughter’s au pair. But no sweat, Hill and his lover wind up sipping cocktails in Sao Paolo, whilst his daughter’s family emerge, miraculously free of any physical or mental trauma, despite the loss of their mother (dead), father (on the lam), au pair (dead), a bullet in the shoulder for the son-in-law, and all the terror normally associated with bereavement, drive-by-shootings and home-invasions, etc.
As a moral parable this is utterly vile. As a piece of cinematic work it’s competently run of the mill. Travolta is, thanks to his undoubted charisma, okay in the role, as morally bankrupt and nonsensical as it may be. Indeed, many of the cast are decent actors, doing their best with unbelievably banal and tasteless material. Amazingly, in spite of the vacuity, or worse yet the moronic mish-mash of half-baked ideas and totally addled morality, this remains reasonably diverting entertainment.
I think that this is a sad reflection on our times. Surely we all deserve better than this? I want to say ‘it’s ok’ when, frankly, it isn’t. Mass-produced pap like this elbows aside and takes up the space other better stuff might occupy. Indeed, most better stuff will never even get made, whilst dross of this ilk is produced in abundance.
I think actors like Revolta ought to have sufficient principles to turn down dumb-ass junk like this. But in the current marketplace such high principles would see most of Hollywood’s current talent forced into jobs in the kind of malls movies like this will call home.
*This sort of stuff – what one might formerly have called celluloid dreck – is also, thankfully, instantly forgettable.
**By the twisted MAGA type logic of such films the hero’s bloody antics would beget countless copycat offspring, as the angered relatives of the folks he butchers set out in their turn, looking for their own violent retribution. All of this ought to give the execs who produce this tripe rock hard boners; the possibilities for endless sequels being literally exponential.