Hunting Jessica Brok

If you want to work in fashion, you go to Paris or Milan. For finance, New York is the place and LA is the town for the movie business. However, if you aspire to a career as a mercenary, Africa is where you need to be. It is even more hospitable for a gangster warlord like Lazar Ipacs. Unfortunately, his old nemesis stayed on the continent, working at a vulture rescue sanctuary in South Africa. That is where Ipacs finds her and her daughter Nikki in Alastair Orr’s Hunting Jessica Brok, which opens today in theaters.

Brok and her comrades thought they were on a simple extraction mission in Angola, until they found all the children Ipacs had trafficked, buried alive as their insurance policies. They tried to pivot into a full-scale rescue mission, but Brok’s entire team was killed, except for herself—or so she thought. At least Brok killed one of Lazar’s brothers before making her getaway, but the trafficker is not inclined to let bygones be bygones.

Through a perverse twist of fate, her lover (and Nikki’s father), Daniel Conner, survived, but not under pleasant conditions. Ipacs will use Conner to get to Brok. Inevitably, Brok escapes their all-night torture bender, so Ipacs goes after next Nikki to regain the upper hand.

Hunting Jessica Brok is an unusually brutal action movie that lays bare the cruelty and corruption of Southern Africa, offering the viewer no place to hide. The violence is on par with vintage exploitation, but it is presented in a more honest and serious manner. When watching Orr’s film, viewers will come to suspect this kind of thing happens everyday in the region—but the targets typically lack Brok’s resourcefulness.

Frankly, all mere mortals also lack her extreme fortitude. At some point, the degree of injuries both she and Ipacs shake off reaches cartoonish levels. However, Orr serves up plenty of red meat for action fans. Technically, Hunting Jessica Brok is unrated, probably for good reason. Indeed, it would be lucky to get a very hard “R.” However, viewers who know their low-budget action will be impressed by the grit and integrity of the fights choreographed by Francois Groenewald and DeVille Vannik.

Likewise, the fierceness of Danica De La Rey Jones and Richard Lukunku as Brok and Ipacs is absolutely visceral. They both tap into their primal, animalistic instincts and turn them loose on screen. Hlubi Mboya is also massively sinister as Ipacs’ Lady Macbeth-like fiancée, Sherri.

This film makes the original Wild Geese look tame and progressive in comparison. However, it effectively holds up a mirror to the viciousness of human nature—as well as nature itself, which supplies some visually striking backdrops for the carnage that ensues. (Nonetheless, the two-hour, fourteen-minute running time is ridiculously excessive—even though much of that time is devoted to bone-crunching beatdowns.) Recommended for action connoisseurs who drink their booze straight, without chasers, Hunting Jessica Brok is now playing in Newark, at the CityPlex 12.