Hell to Pay: Diablo (2025) Review

Director: Ernesto Díaz Espinoza

Notable Cast: Scott Adkins, Marko Zaror, Alanna de la Rosa, Diana Hoyos, Lucho Velasco

At this point, if you wanted to add Scott Adkins or Marko Zaror to any film, I’m there. Put both of them in? Well, shake me down and steal my lunch money, cause you can have it. Watching these two duke it out cinematically on screen since Undisputed III might be one of the best things in action cinema in the last 15 years (even when they don’t fight but share the same film like in John Wick 4). For their latest film, Diablo, Zaror is bringing along long-time director and collaborator Ernesto Díaz Espinoza (notable for Redeemer and Fist of the Condor), and the results are as smashingly high-octane as one would hope. 

Dodging Bullets: Take Cover (2024) Review

Director: Nick McKinless

Notable Cast: Scott Adkins, Alice Eve, Jack Parr, Billy Clements, Mădălina Bellariu Ion, Renars Latkovskis, Nik Coleman, Alba De Torrebruna

 

Take Cover is simple, which I appreciate wholeheartedly. While theatrical action films continue to try to bring flocks of people to the theater with spectacle, the Scott Adkins vehicle continues to run on simple ideas, strong action execution, and just enough thoughtful drama to build a foundation. That's it. That's all. 

 

Take Cover is just that. Less is more. 

 

The concept? Two mercenaries, a sniper (Adkins) and his spotter (Parr), are trapped in a massive hotel room by another sniper and a handful of baddies waiting to crush them if they try to leave. The simplicity breeds creativity, and Take Cover can take advantage of it. Yes, the film does start outside the room, showcasing a job that goes sideways, the chemistry between the two men as partners, and their abilities as fighters, shooters, and escape artists, but really, it's all set up to The Room. Once it gets there, despite a few convenient flaws of logic in the script to keep them there, the film can start boiling tension and working its fun dynamics as an action flick. 

 

A Man with a Cause: John Wick: Chapter 4 (2023) Review

Director: Chad Stahelski

Notable Cast: Keanu Reeves, Donnie Yen, Bill Skarsgard, Ian McShane, Laurence Fishburne, Lance Reddick, Clancy Brown, Hiroyuki Sanada, Shamier Anderson, Rina Sawayama, Scott Adkins, Marko Zaror

 

At one point leading into the final portion of John Wick: Chapter 4, Clancy Brown’s Harbinger warns the big bad of the film, The Marquis - played with a seething and conniving performance by Bill Skarsgard, that a man’s ambition should never exceed his worth. The moment is one to indicate that, despite the villain’s endless amount of resources and skilled killers, The Marquis is still over his head in trying to kill John Wick. Yet it’s also the same warning that echoed my worries for this fourth entry.

 

Would the ambitions of the John Wick franchise eventually exceed its worth?

 

With John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum, one could see the ambitions for building the globe trotting world start to stretch to the point of excess. Not that the film is inherently bad, nay, but it is one where some of the choices for plot and narrative felt the strain.

 

With John Wick: Chapter 4, the series addresses those (including an opening sequence that neatly ties an open thread with a bullet point of finality) and then proceeds to grow the series in scope while going back to the thematic and narrative points about the character that made this franchise explode with audiences. It’s a cinematic magic trick of epic proportions. It balances its emotional parallels for the character while simultaneously giving the viewer the biggest and most ambitious entry yet. If the ambitions were exceeding the worth, Chapter 4 grows the worth to match those ambitions. The results are glorious and punctuated with the viciousness of a napalm loaded shotgun blast.

 

Max Cloud (2020)

Director: Martin Owen

Notable Cast: Scott Adkins, Franz Drameh, John Hannah, Lashana Lynch, Elliot James Langridge, Isabelle Allen, Sally Collett, Sam Hazeldine, Tommy Flanagan, Jason Maza, Andi Osho

Also known as: The Intergalactic Adventures of Max Cloud

 

It only makes sense that there would be a boom of video game movies in the aftermath of two very successful Jumanji sequels. Of course, by ‘video game movies,’ I mean movies that inherently involve deconstructing video game tropes and are not directly based on video game IP. And by that, I mean films that feel more like Jumanji 2 and 3, but aren’t Gamer, an underrated gem of a film that deserves a bit more credit, but I digress. This is where Max Cloud presses starts and joins the fray. In essence, this little can do low-budget film takes the same basic idea as the last couple of Jumanji films and then gives it a decidedly fun intergalactic beat-em-up spin. Quite frankly, if it wasn’t for the Scott Adkins casting, I’m not sure this would have made my list to watch. Yet the pleasant surprise of the film being a delightfully entertaining experience was a bonus and for those looking for a fun way to burn 90 minutes, look no further than Max Cloud and his rowdy band of intergalactic ass-kickers.

 

Legacy of Lies (2020)

Director: Adrian Bol

Notable Cast: Scott Adkins, Honor Kneafsey, Andrea Vasiliou, Yuliia Sobol, Anna Butkevich, Martin McDougall

 

Well, say what you will about 2020, but it has not stopped the massive run of films that Scott Adkins is having in the last handful of years. With only a handful of misses in the run, Adkins continues to impress and his latest, Legacy of Lies. A multi-national film, although the Ukrainian and Easter European influence can most certainly be felt in the tone and use of its setting, there is a sense of seriousness and darker atmosphere that makes it a perfect counterbalance to Adkins’ other action highlight of the year, Debt Collectors. Legacy of Lies pulls heavily from the modern meets old school tonality that has become its own style in the 00s, but the combination of some sharp direction, great characters, and Adkins’ impactful screen presence makes it one of the highlights of a rather dismal year in action cinema.

 

An ex-MI6 agent, Martin (Adkisn) finds himself caught between American and Russian agents when an old case, one that left him and his daughter widowed comes back to life. With his daughter (Kneafsey) is kidnapped, he will have to team up with a shadow of his past (Sobol) to unravel the missing threads.

 

Debt Collectors (2020)

Director: Jesse V. Johnson

Notable Cast: Scott Adkins, Louis Mandylor, Ski Carr, Vladimir Kulich, Charity Collins, Mayling Ng

As both a huge fan of director Jesse V. Johnson and action icon Scott Adkins, I’m always down to partake when either of them release a new film. Put them together and I’m throwing my wallet into their hands. However, when it was announced the two would be re-teaming up for a sequel to The Debt Collector, called Debt Collectors, I was a bit perplexed. You see, if you’ve seen the first film, you know that it definitively ends the story of our two makeshift anti-heroes, French and Sue. There wasn’t a lot of room for a sequel. Yet, here we are with the bickering banter of our two favorite collection agents in this – and I only assume – first sequel to the surprise action hit. While Debt Collectors isn’t quite the pleasantly humorous surprise of the first, it’s still a rock ‘em, sock ‘em slab of entertainment that delivers on all of the expected elements of the first film. It’s impeccably charming, loaded with the usual action awesomeness from the directing and star duo, and gives the fans what they want from a sequel.

Seven months after the events of The Debt Collector, Sue – once again played with the charming trashiness of Louis Mandylor, finds French bouncing at the local bar. A bar that was, more or less, used as a comedic set piece in the first film. French, played by my pick for Batman Scott Adkins (how many letters do I have to write to Warner Bros. to get that to happen?,) is having a rough go of it and Sue gives him the opportunity to get back into the debt collecting game for one last round. Three collections. Two days. $70,000.

Ip Man 4: The Finale (2019)

Director: Wilson Yip

Notable Cast: Donnie Yen, Wu Yue, Vanness Wu, Scott Adkins, Kent Cheng, Danny Chan, Chris Collins, Ngo Ka-nin, Vanda Margraf, Jim Liu, Lo Mang

Of the last decade and change, there have been a few action franchises that have stood out as defining of the time period. One of them was the surprise international success of the Ip Man franchise. It exploded the careers of director Wilson Yip and actor Donnie Yen while at the same time injecting a fresh dose of energy into the traditional martial arts film all around the world. It’s a series near and dear to my heart, so when it was announced that Ip Man 4 would be the last, it comes with a sense of sadness on its finality. While the film certainly cements itself as the last of the “official” series (good luck stopping the ongoing Ipsploitation subgenre though) there is a lot of fascinating approaches to the film that make it feels like this series still has a lot to say, even if the end result of this entry is more muddled than the rest. Ip Man 4: The Finale will deliver on the basics that fans have come to expect, through action and heart, but it’s some of the wild new elements that make this one such a fascinating end to the series.

Triple Threat (2019)

Director: Jesse V. Johnson

Notable Cast: Tony Jaa, Scott Adkins, Iko Uwais, Tiger Chen, Michael Jai White, Celina Jade, Michael Bisping, Jeeja Yanin, Ron Smoorenburg, Monica Mok

Hype can be a challenging thing for a film. As soon as Triple Threat was announced, the hype was already at maximum. Between the impressive ensemble cast, the director, and the general tone that immediately came with it, Triple Threat was immediately an action fan dream – particularly from the martial arts variety. Even with all of that riding along for the journey, including how long the film was taking to get a release in the US, Triple Threat is a massive action cinema treat. It looks hype in the eye, says “talk, talk, talk” and then knocks its lights out. The fact remains, even with some smaller issues that arise here and there, that Triple Threat delivers on its promises. It has bigger than life characters, a wildly efficient plot, and enough action to shake the foundations of cinema. It’s a film that certainly gears what it does towards its distinctive audience, for better or worse, but for someone like myself I could not have had a better time watching the film.

Boyka: Undisputed 4 (2017)

Director: Todor Chapkanov

Notable Cast: Scott Adkins, Teodora Duhovnikova, Alon Aboutboul, Julian Vergov, Brahim Achabbakhe, Paul Chahidi, Martyn Ford, Emilien De Falco, Tim Man

“Bring me your fucking champion.”

Perhaps this is just preaching to the choir, but by this point it’s pretty obvious that low budget, straight to home video action films are their own kind of art. Scoff if you want, but it’s true. Like most any other niche genre, it now has its own fanbase, its own rules, and its own set of expectations to be judged by. When it comes to this artform, it’s also pretty obvious that the Undisputed franchise are some the best there are, turning a fairly decent, but ultimately forgettable prison boxing flick into a strangely effective and rather brilliant straight to home video franchise. By introducing the world to Scott Adkins’ “most complete fighter in the world” Boyka as the villain in Undisputed II, this series suddenly had one of the most interesting action film characters in the last couple decades. Following his exploits has only proven to give the series more momentum in both quality and style, leading up to the best film of the franchise thus far, Boyka: Undisputed 4 (or just Boyka: Undisputed if you go by the main title card.) This fourth entry into the series showcases perhaps the best writing yet and continues to feature the high flying and impressive fight sequences this series has come to embrace. It’s a film that truly shows off the art form the genre has become and fans are going to eat it up.

Savage Dog (2017)

Director: Jesse V. Johnson

Notable Cast: Scott Adkins, Marko Zaror, Keith David, Juju Chan, Cung Le, Vladimir Kulich, Charles Fathy, Matthew Marsden, Sheena Chou, Luke Massy

Some legends are born and others are made. For a film like Savage Dog, the idea of crafting a legend is central to its story and one that finds itself repeated throughout Keith David’s shockingly effective voice over narrative. It also seems to be the intent of its cast and crew in the bigger spectrum of making an action film that stands out from the rest. For B-action movie connoisseurs, Savage Dog has already developed hype and status. Jesse V. Johnson has accumulated a stunning modern action cast and gives the film a unique period piece setting to let them loose. On those three things (director, cast, and concept) the film already seems poised to be one of the cult classics of the year and perhaps one of its sleeper hits. While the ambitions of Savage Dog occasionally outpace its own boundaries which may not lift the film into the upper echelons of action filmmaking in a specific regard, the film partners those ambitions with a lot of memorable and fascinating approaches that make it one of the more interesting films one is likely to see this year, simply in its blending of genres and intent. It’s a film about legends and for fans it just may reach the next step towards becoming one with its action set pieces, screen devouring cast, and great concept.

Doctor Strange (2016)

Director: Scott Derrickson

Notable Cast: Benedict Cumberbatch, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Tilda Swinton, Rachel McAdams, Benedict Wong, Mads Mikkelsen, Scott Adkins, Benjamin Bratt

There were a lot of mixed feelings I had when Doctor Strange finished. The Marvel Cinematic Universe is already a series of films that has given me some mixed feelings as a cinephile lately because there is most certainly a formula that they use and it’s made to appeal to the great common denominator of cinema goers. Yes, finally, the MCU is starting to experiment within the reach of the formula and it has garnered some fun films. Guardians of the Galaxy utilized the quirk and charm of director/writer James Gunn to sell its space opera. Ant-Man attempted the Marvel heist flick to mild success. So really, when Disney and the Marvel movie machine decided to attack the realm of mysticism with Doctor Strange, perhaps I got my hopes up a bit too high that they would try to jump the proven track. Instead of a truly unique cinematic Marvel experience, Doctor Strange is the usual MCU fair that garners the same successes and failures of many of the previous films and it generally adheres to the formula pretty strictly – which is kind of sad considering the potential. The film does have a lot of great trippy, psychedelic visuals to go with it and it has that great Marvel sense of fun to go with it, but it’s hard to not be at least slightly disappointed that the film didn’t go further with its concepts. Then again, the film has a 90+% on Rotten Tomatoes and an A Cinemascore, so the people have already generally spoken for the film.

Hard Target 2 (2016)

Director: Roel Reine

Notable Cast: Scott Adkins, Robert Knepper, Rhona Mitra, Temuera Morrison, Ann Truong, Adam Saunders, Jamie Timony, Peter Hardy, Sean Keenan, Troy Honeysett, Amarin Cholvibul, and a cameo by Jeeja Yanin

“You have something that belongs to me.”
“A false sense of superiority?”

The mining of nostalgic franchises is not new to the realm of straight to home video. While people seem up in arms about theatrical movies rebooting/remaking/franchising classic series, this has been a very popular thing to do in the home video market for decades. So is it all that surprising that a sequel to Hard Target would be hitting store shelves, VOD, and Netflix 23 years after the original hit theaters? I, for one, am not inherently against the franchising of older films for a newer generation as long as the film works. In the case of Hard Target 2, it does. It works much better than I could have ever hoped for a straight to home video actioner. While the film is hardly perfect and certainly has that low budget ‘do what you can with what you have’ kind of tone to it at times, it’s such a focused and entertaining film that it hardly misses a beat to give action fans a bit of what they want out of a film like Hard Target 2.

The Blood Splatter: 2016 Action Vol. 1 [Code of Honor, Standoff, Jarhead 3: The Siege]

There is only enough time in the day to write so many reviews, edit them, and format them for the site. Yet we still receive a ton of requests to cover films that may not fit into the schedule. So Blood Brothers has developed a series called The Blood Splatter where our reviewers do three quick takes on various films for our readers that may have not fit into the full review schedule.

Similar to what I have been doing with earlier Blood Splatter articles, I wanted to cover some of the action movies I may not have had time to cover with full reviews. Well, some of these films also didn't deserve full reviews as you will see in this and/or future installments. For this edition of The Blood Splatter, we cover three 2016 straight to home video actioners with lots of action star power: Code of Honor, Standoff, and Jarhead 3. Enjoy.