Reviewed by: Dare Devil Kid (DDK)
Rating: 3.2/5 stars
Scott Adkins is cinema's reigning B-movie badass, and he again teams with his frequent director Isaac Florentine ("Undisputed II" and "Undisputed III", "Ninja", and "Ninja: Shadow of a Tear") for "Close Range", a neo-western in which the star displays his gifts for leaping in slow motion, roundhouse-kicking bad guys in the face, and stabbing crotches with belt-buckle blades.
Adkins plays an ex-military loner named Colt McCready (because, you know, he's ready for action) who rescues his kidnapped niece from Mexican drug lords and then must re-save her when those cartel villains show up in Arizona looking for an invaluable flash drive inadvertently taken by Colt.
That flimsy plot isn't enough to sustain even the film's fleeting 85 minutes, something Florentine had done admirably well in the aforementioned B-movie classics. Fortunately, Florentine pads his material with one combative set piece after another involving anonymous adversaries (who are pointlessly but hilariously given actual names), all of them marked by Adkins's use of lethal martial- arts moves and by hand-held camera-work that captures mayhem in lucid, up-close-and-personal long takes.
Like its star, whose facial expressions range from grimaces to scowls, "Close Range" is a one-note throwback infused with the spirit of Bronson's, Stallone's, Schwarzenegger's, Seagal's, Norris', and Van Damme's most brutal 70s and 80s kill-'em-all sagas. It's as unsubtle as a boot to the head, but its dour-and-campy lo-fi style is far preferable to the spastic flash of its big-budget genre compatriots.
Rating: 3.2/5 stars
Scott Adkins is cinema's reigning B-movie badass, and he again teams with his frequent director Isaac Florentine ("Undisputed II" and "Undisputed III", "Ninja", and "Ninja: Shadow of a Tear") for "Close Range", a neo-western in which the star displays his gifts for leaping in slow motion, roundhouse-kicking bad guys in the face, and stabbing crotches with belt-buckle blades.
Adkins plays an ex-military loner named Colt McCready (because, you know, he's ready for action) who rescues his kidnapped niece from Mexican drug lords and then must re-save her when those cartel villains show up in Arizona looking for an invaluable flash drive inadvertently taken by Colt.
That flimsy plot isn't enough to sustain even the film's fleeting 85 minutes, something Florentine had done admirably well in the aforementioned B-movie classics. Fortunately, Florentine pads his material with one combative set piece after another involving anonymous adversaries (who are pointlessly but hilariously given actual names), all of them marked by Adkins's use of lethal martial- arts moves and by hand-held camera-work that captures mayhem in lucid, up-close-and-personal long takes.
Like its star, whose facial expressions range from grimaces to scowls, "Close Range" is a one-note throwback infused with the spirit of Bronson's, Stallone's, Schwarzenegger's, Seagal's, Norris', and Van Damme's most brutal 70s and 80s kill-'em-all sagas. It's as unsubtle as a boot to the head, but its dour-and-campy lo-fi style is far preferable to the spastic flash of its big-budget genre compatriots.