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First, and foremost, I should clarify that the film is a German feature and, as might be expected, heavily dubbed into English. In this regard, it is closer to a traditional docudrama than an actual feature film. Dubbed by their original voices for the most part – Mark does play Mark, and Hues does play Hues, etc. There are many examples of this. For instance, Wolfgang Riehm who plays the Commander’s role is speaking in German and is being dubbed by someone else. Initially, I feared this was going to be unbearable, especially when one of the first scenes gave me negative echoes of ADR where some of the actors were possibly placed in a large room. Nevertheless, the misgivings did subside, and the soundtrack became much easier to cope with, although still rare was any part of the dialogue believable. Some may find my tolerances a tad lax, but admiring Kung Fu films did assist me in that department.
Gus (Mark Dacascos) and Frank (Matthias Hues) were the first two heroes to attack a compound with the help of two squads. With all the military guns at their disposal unimaginable and multitude of hand cabins, they got the package. The heavily stacked squad even managed to get some sweet throat knife action, but the cost of losing one of their men. Upon returning to the Commander, Gus informs him that he is done with this crap and decides to disband the company. There is some unmentioned context shed light upon, which is he sold the special private operations set up group instead of regular army joes.
Gus is now 8 years older and is having dinner with his wife and daughter, but this time comes with Hans, who was his former commander. Over dinner, however, Hans drops a bombshell by claiming that he has been unwell and has recently developed a medical condition. This seems crucial and alarming, but given the context of the rest of the story, Gus’ wife is too impatient to engage in such aspects, so they end up leaving instead. It isn’t long until that same night his family gets attacked in their home, his daughter gets kidnapped and his wife gets brutally raped and murdered, while the whole scene is chock full of morbid imagery. After this horrible attack, Gus goes to check on him at the hospital and states he will get the old team back together and rescue the daughter, while bringing out what he recognizes as Ultimate Justice.
Though this is arguably one of the oldest action movies around in terms of it’s plot, I digress. Independent action films definitely have more than this to offer to seasoned DTV action movie fans. To begin with, there were numerous firefights and battles, all taking place in interesting changed up set pieces to keep things interesting. The hand to hand fighting was extensive based on martial arts techniques and as the best Jackie Chan films used to, it involved using random objects for weapons while simultaneously taking on three foes which ultimately culminated with a shovel to the face. It would move from an interrogation followed by fighting, then shootouts, dirt bike and car chases, all in the attempt to rescue the girl while losing some of the team members, and throwing in a red herring. In turn, some older tropes like “I thought you were dead,” popped out of the closet which is not in my opinion, a bad thing. While most viewers did not come here expecting anything else, some negativity is welcomed.
Mark Dacascos and Matthias Hues were great as compadres in this movie. Indeed all the fighters were believable, and I was a fan of the decent screen time they gave the main characters. My highlight from the movie was Mike Moller as Benny, who in my opinion pulls off the fastest Van Damme-like kicks.
He’s definitely upgraded from Inmate I in Half Past Dead and has a decent portfolio as a professional stuntman. I would like to see more of his lead action performances. No offense to the rest of the team, whose fights were awesome, but he was the best.
When Gus assembles the team, we are treated to the memorable scenes of what all the former members are doing now, the last being in The Expendables 3. One of them is a cop who is street fighting for spare cash on the side. The next is the stereotypical computer hacker who is brought on to…. hack computers. Meanwhile, Benny is busy pumping gas and fighting off nasty customers for the sake of some teenage girl clients. Rhea Brandon, who played Doc, has become a monk to repent for his previous life as an outstanding interrogator. But hands down, the show is won by Matthias Hues with his new profession of burger flipping while sporting a burger hat. It’s, as you can see below, off-the-charts impressive.
While the film may have a poor reputation from poorly-done dub versions, it offers quite a nice visual experience. Properly lit and shot with decent cameras, this one had a modicum of budget and was filmed in scope. The camera doesn’t shake all that much during the fighting scenes, even if it is a bit excessively frantic, which is a breath of fresh air when compared to most modern DTV films, where the visuals are not prioritized. Yes, we do get the very rare CG muzzle flash along with squibs, but I did not think that was distracting in the slightest.
In general, this is a decent indie actioner that is flawed only slightly by the sometimes funny post-production voice work, but is largely saved by some quite good action set pieces, a story that does not strive too hard to be intelligent, and a good team of fighters (some of the bad guys too are good fighters) who know how to deliver a good kicking. Good times at an hour and a half and decent DTV first work for a novice director Martin Christopher Bode.
Outside of Matthias Hues’ burger hat, the most significant alterations to personality is the conflict we witness with Doc which happens when he shifts from master interrogator to pseudo boxer monk. He clicks and embraces the dark side after one of the people who works with him gets killed, and the movie does take a very dark twist into quasi Hostel territory with Doc using a nail gun and disc sander to crank the torture up a few notches. To paraphrase Han Solo, “I was never even questioned.”
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