Hellfire, Starring Stphen Lang & Dolph Lundgren

He calls himself Nomada in much the same way Tishiro Mifune called himself “Sanjuro” in Yoijmbo. Obviously, this film won’t be as good, but what movie could be? Regardless, Nomada happens to be a Special Forces veteran, as well as the drifter who refuses to drift in Isaac Florentine’s Hellfire, which releases tomorrow on VOD.

The Vietnam veteran kept saying he was “just passing through,” but the more people like Sheriff Wiley tell him to pass through quicker, the more he wants to stick around. He takes it particularly badly from a dirtbag weasel like Clyde. He also takes exception to Clyde’s abusive treatment of Owen Hayes and his daughter Lena. In fact, Hayes is the one who christens Nomada’s nickname, while he works odd jobs in exchange for meals.

Of course, Nomada instinctively stands up to Clyde’s bullying, which leads to war. Fortunately, he can call in a favor with an old comrade for supplies. However, the problem runs deeper than Clyde. His mean old man, “Jermiah,” has forced the entire town into complicity with the family’s narcotics-supplying business.

Hellfire is a lot like a vintage A-Team episode, except the bullets actually hit people—dead. In fact, Jeremiah and Clyde perpetrate some horrendous crimes that might even shock frequent viewers of Florentine’s VOD action movies. Nomada also takes an inhuman degree of punishment, to a degree that stretches credulity. However, the down-and-dirty action sequences will impress with their grittiness.

Signe Baumane’s My Love Affair with Marriage, on OVID.tv

Evidently, the Soviet regime ruined weddings and funerals, because they made them all about Communism rather than the people everyone came to honor. However, Baumane’s pseudo-proxy cannot really blame the old, bad state for the failure of her first marriage. Most of the culpability lies with her selfish ex, and maybe to lesser extent herself, for excusing his bad behavior for far too long. Yet, the real culprit is human biology, because it prompts bad decisions with its dopamine and the like in Baumane’s animated feature My Love Affair with Marriage, which premieres Friday on OVID.tv.

While the film starts on Russian-occupied Karafuto Island, “Zelma” mostly grew up in Latvia, where she didn’t take guff from any of her classmates. Yet, that perversely made her something of an outsider, since girls were expected to be meek. Consequently, it is on a day-trip to Vilnius where she loses her v-status, to Jonas, a much older artist. Of course, the loss of “purity” holds dire implications, even in the USSR. Yet, Zelma navigates such pitfalls better than her roommate, who dies as a result of an unplanned and untreated pregnancy.

Zelma assumes her marriage to Sergei will be the answer to everything, but eventually she recognizes what the audience knew all along. He is a cad and a user. She thinks Bo from Sweden will be different—and he is. Yet, it still doesn’t quite work. Actually, her second marriage is rather sad, because he is not a bad guy. Again, it is just a matter of chemistry, as “Biology” herself explains.

Periodically, the personification of biology narrates interludes that illustrate exactly what is happening to the neural receptors and the brain chemistry of the film’s characters. Think of these slightly surreal segments as if they were industrial films made for 1960s sex ed classes, adapted into animation by Bill Plympton. The first two or three are really cool and funny but the motif loses it potency over time. (Imagine if the Burt Reynolds control room skit in Woody Allen’s Everything You Ever Wanted to Know had been stretched throughout the entire film.)

Yes, less probably could have been more, but Love Affair with Marriage is still a distinctive animated film from a refreshingly offbeat animator. Her previous feature Rocks in My Pockets is still the film you should start with, but together they make quite a revealing personal statement.

Old Man, Starring Stephen Lang

What will soak your butt faster, the storm outside the cabin, or the moonshine inside? The mason jar of “old mule” (it has a kick) comes courtesy of your unstable and standoffish host. He is a rather crusty cuss, who must have a reason for isolating himself in the Smoky Mountain woods in Lucky McKee’s Old Man, which releases tomorrow in theaters and on-demand.

At least for now, the old man will simply be known as “Old Man.” When Joe, the lost hiker, knocks on his door, he introduces himself with a shotgun in his face. The Old Man is distrustful, especially considering how vague Joe’s story is. However, he would not turn out a traveler in need, especially with a storm approaching.

As they settle in over some ‘shine, the old man tells violent anecdotes that may or may not be true and Joe confesses to some of the personal problems he was hoping to escape. Eventually, things veer into folkish horror territory, when their conversation turns towards local native lore, which may or may not explain what is going on.

Experienced cult film fans might have a general idea where the film is headed, but McKee brings it all together pretty effectively. This has to be his best film since he contributed to the anthology film Tales of Halloween. The film is largely two people talking, but McKee maintains the claustrophobic tension nicely.

Of course, the key to it all is Stephen Lang’s riveting performance as the Old Man. He is definitely building on his cranky old horror guy persona established in VFW and the Don’t Breathe films, but he covers a much broader and more intense emotional spectrum as the Old Man. He goes to some dark places. Frankly, it is easy to imagine this film depended on getting him, because it is hard to picture anyone else in the role.

Don’t Breathe 2: The Redemption of Norman Nordstrom

Supposedly, Detroit was coming back. Yet, in 2020 homicides still rose 19%, even though total population fell below 640,000. On the other hand, one of Detroit’s most famous cinematic citizens has found redemption in a sequel. In Don’t Breathe, veteran Norman Nordstrom did not take kindly to a band of home invaders (and frankly, we can’t blame him for that). It also turned out he had a few sinister secrets of his own. Since that time, he moved to another abandoned Detroit house, where he raises his adopted daughter Phoenix. He will fight to his last breath (so to speak) when a gang of organ traffickers comes for her in Rodo Sayagues’ Don’t Breathe 2, which releases tomorrow on DVD.

It was annoyingly problematic that Fede Alvarez’s original Don’t Breathe made a villain out of a blind Vietnam veteran. (Yes, but I’m sure the filmmakers would be the first to say they “support the troops.”) As a result, the sequel is redemption for the franchise, as well as Nordstrom (a.k.a. “The Blind Man”). We do not immediately learn how Nordstrom came to adopt Phoenix, but we eventually understand he found her at an opportune time. During the subsequent years, he home-schooled her, including a rigorous survivalist curriculum. This being Detroit, those lessons will come in handy.

From time-to-time, Nordstrom allows Phoenix to visit the outside world with Hernandez, a veteran landscaper, who purchases the plants he grows in his greenhouse. She is sympathetic, but she cautions him against his excessive over-protectiveness. Yet, Raylan’s creepy meth-headed gang starts stalking Phoenix during one of her rare outings with Hernandez.

Frankly, Don’t Breathe 2 is probably more brutally violent than its predecessor. While it doesn’t exactly try to walk-back the most damning elements of the first film, it is clear Sayagues and Alvarez (who co-wrote and produced) hope viewers do not remember them. This Nordstrom is haunted and guilt-wracked by his past, but he is definitely a good guy.

Stephen Lang is just as hard-nosed reprising his role as Nordstrom, but this time he plays a flesh-and-blood human being, with heavy emotions. He also seems more credible in the action scenes, even though he is even greyer and more grizzled. Unfortunately, the idea of what the bad guys are up to is scarier than the workmanlike performances of Brendan Sexton III as Raylan and Fiona O’Shaughnessy as his Lady Macbeth.

Death in Texas, Co-Starring Stephen Lang & John Ashton

As a bordertown El Paso has easy access to drugs and black market organs from Mexico. Unfortunately for Billy Walker, the same cartel controls the trafficking of both. He starts robbing from them to pay for a new liver for his mother. It is not a really well-thought-out plan, but at least he’ll be cleaning up the town a little in director-screenwriter Scott Windhauser’s Death in Texas, which releases Friday in theaters and on VOD.

Walker has just been paroled thanks to his mother Grace’s failing health. He isn’t a bad guy. He just had bad luck and a bad temper. She is so far down on the donor list, her chances of a transplant are remote, unless Walker buys a liver “off the books.” That will take 160K in cash, so he starts with a former associate working for the Cartel. Stealing Cartel money quickly attracts the attention of Reynolds, the Cartel boss and Asher, the crooked cop in his pocket.

Meanwhile, Grace finds unlikely romance with John Scofield, a disgraced former doctor now working as an orderly in the hospital. His backstory will turn out to be significant to Walker’s story, in a very contrived way.

Windhauser just can’t seem to make up his mind what Death in TX is supposed to be: indie crime drama, exploitative narco-thriller, or self-parody. It is just never sufficiently gritty, grungy, or violent to really qualify as anything. Still, Ronnie Gene Blevins deserves credit for his hardboiled but understated performance as Walker. He is pretty solid, but Bruce Dern just looks laughable as Reynolds, as if the Cartel would choose a desiccated old hippie to run its American operations.

Calls, on Apple TV+

It is sort of like “Sorry, Wrong Number” for fans of Tenet. Thanks to a strange quantum physics anomaly, people have been getting phone calls from different time periods—in some cases from themselves. Unfortunately, whenever someone tries to alter their timeline, the universe fights back, usually in a rather vicious way. The concept is high but the visuals are minimal in creator-director’s Fede Alvarez’s Calls (based on the French series created by Timothee Hochet), which premieres this Friday on Apple TV+.

Supposedly, Calls starts with the ending—the cataclysmic doomsday end—and then flashes back to the beginning, before filling in the middle with the subsequent seven episodes—except maybe not. There might be a handful of people smart enough to figure what is happening to our plane of reality in time to stop it. Of course, there are those who will try to take advantage of the quantum anomaly to reverse horrible personal tragedies, but these rarely work out well.

Indeed, Calls is an unusually dark and moody science fiction series. Several episodes, like “Me, Myself, and Darlene,” “The Universe Did It,” and “Mom” are downright downers (the former two being the most poignant and effective). Ironically, the best episode, “Pedro Across the Street,” is a total outlier, due to its humorous tone and the fact the quantum phone call doesn’t even happen in the episode (it is only referenced by the character who called himself).

Stylistically, Calls is more closely akin to a podcast than a television show, because the only visuals are the audio waves and static representing the phone calls heard during each episode. Basically, the viewing experience is like watching the spectrum analyzer on your stereo. (As a point of contrast, Shudder’s terrific podcast Video Palace created a much more intriguing visual loop for its creepy tale of insidious video tapes.) However, the way Alvarez keeps dropping hints about the greater quantum mystery afoot keeps us sufficiently hooked.

Joe Begos’ VFW

It is like Cheers, with attitude and veterans’ benefits. They aren’t getting any younger, but the patrons and staff can still fight as hard as they drink. Society is collapsing around this Veterans of Foreign Wars post, but the regulars still uphold standards of conduct. A pack of drug-crazed punks will learn that the hard way in Joe Begos’ VFW, which releases today on DVD (and is already available on VOD).

Nationwide, VFW posts are struggling because of the organization’s institutional difficulties recruiting veterans of Vietnam and later conflicts. However, Fred Paras and most of his cronies are ‘Nam vets. Doug McCarthy happens to be a Korean War veteran and Shawn Mason has freshly returned from the Middle East, choosing tonight of all nights to grab a beer at the VFW. He is a sharp-shooter—a talent that will come in handy.

The shots and salty talk are about to be interrupted by Lizard, a young street dweller, who stole a shipment of the designer drug “Hype” from Boz, the local gang-leader, to avenge her sister. Even though she rubs Paras and his comrades the wrong way, they still offer her shelter from Boz’s marauding “Hyper” hoards. Things will get bloody and tragic, but they still abide by a code of honor.

Although Assault on Precinct 13 is an obvious source of inspiration for this film, the attitude and razor-sharp dialogue is distinctively its own. This film respects veterans and demands the same of its audience. Of course, it is not exactly shy when it comes to gore either.

Rogue Warfare: Fighting Terror with Oppressive Regimes

How does China “fight terrorism?” By condemning hundreds of thousands of innocent Uyghurs from East Turkestan to concentration camps. As for Russia, they do their utmost to prop up terrorist-sponsoring states, like Syria and Iran. Yet, both have permanent seats on the UN Security council, so both are part of a decidedly fictional 5-nation anti-terrorism military force. Credibility takes a backseat to courting the Chinese and Russian box offices throughout Mike Gunther’s Rogue Warfare, which releases today on DVD.

As the film opens, the unnamed POTUS puts his John Hancock on the “Rogue” military pact with the UK, France, Russia, and China. He harkens back to the day when all five nations aligned to fight the Axis powers (declining to mention Russia initially sided with Hitler—ask Poland about that). They are tasked with fighting extreme Islamist terrorist, but Gunther’s screenplay doesn’t even have the guts to call out Daesh or Al-Qaeda. Instead, they will be tracking a “rogue” terrorist organization known as the Black Masks.

Still, watching the free and not-the-least-bit free worlds take on generic Islamist terror could still be entertaining, but the inter-team dynamics seem to be carefully calibrated to kill any joy that could come from this film. Naturally, the Brit is a trigger-happy jerk who has utter contempt for teamwork, while Chinese and Russian members always play well with others.

Even more problematic, at least half the film feels like it is devoted the terrorists’ “Supreme Leader” as he airs his grievances and screeds. Frankly, this film starts to feel like recruiting propaganda for anti-Western terrorist groups. It would be offensive, if it weren’t so dull.

Beyond Glory: Stephen Lang as Eight Medal of Honor Recipients

Almost half of all U.S. Medal of Honor honorees served during the Civil War. It has been bestowed posthumously 621 times throughout history. Currently, only seventy-seven recipients are still living. In all ways they are the elite of the elite. Adapting Larry Smith’s popular history of select recipients, Stephen Lang mounted a one-man tribute show that played Off-Broadway, throughout America, and on military bases all over the world. Cross-cutting between several of Lang’s more notable “command performance,” director-editor Larry Brand shows the theater piece in its entirety while conveying its wider significance during a time of war and armed hostility in Beyond Glory (trailer here), which releases today on VOD.

Strictly speaking, Lang is kind of white-ish, but he plays two African Americans, one Asian American, and several working class white ethnic Americans, without any stilted awkwardness. After all, it would be un-American to exclude anyone on the basis of race. There is no question each recipient’s story merits inclusion. Of course, they all have the Medal of Honor to prove it.

John William Finn’s real life heroics on December 7^th put the Pearl Harbor movie to shame, as Michael Bay would probably be the first to admit. Clarence Eugene Sasser’s Vietnam era Medal was awarded for his efforts saving lives under enemy fire, despite the shrapnel in his back—a distinction that means quite a bit to him. Perhaps the most colorful character would be Lewis Millett Sr., who led the last recorded American battlefield bayonet in Korea. James Bond Stockdale is indeed the Stockdale Ross Perot chose as his running mate in 1992, but he should really be remembered for the harrowing seven and a half years he spent in the Hanoi Hilton as the highest ranking Navy POW.

Given his profoundly humble origins, Vietnam was almost an empowering experience for Nicky Daniel Bacon, but that does not diminish from his battlefield heroics. Lang seems to have the most fun playing tough talking New Yorker Hector Albert Cafferata, Jr., who easily gets the show’s funniest lines. However, he is still humble to a fault chronicling his actions at what would come to be known as “Fox Hill” near Chosin Reservoir.

Lang and Brand close with Vernon Joseph Baker and Daniel Inouye, staging limited interaction (through the magic of editing) between the two men, both of whom had lesser but meaningful awards upgraded to Medals of Honor in 1998 and 2000. Their experiences also mirror each other, having served with distinction in the Italian theater while facing racism at home and within the service.

There is no shortage of moments in Beyond Glory to choke you up and make you misty eyed. Brand’s mastercut approach is actually quite effective at relieving the inherent staginess of Lang’s one-man show. No matter who the actor is playing, he is always locked-in, but the changing sets and backdrops breaks up the otherwise static visuals.

You can be confident it treats its subjects with respect, because veteran’s advocate Gary Sinise supplied the voice of the military announcer. Frankly, it is rather baffling that the film version of Beyond Glory has not had a more traditional theatrical release, at least in Red State military communities (especially with James Cameron on board as an executive producer), but it should find a large and appreciative audience on VOD. Recommended for general audiences, Beyond Glory is now available on iTunes and other platforms.

Don’t Breathe: One Way or Another, Detroit Will Kill You

Detroit has slashed it police force by forty percent over the last ten years. Ordinarily, that makes things awfully convenient for Rocky and her burglar pals, because it means there just are not a lot of cops to respond to calls. However, their perspective will change drastically when they pick the profoundly wrong house to invade in Fede Alvarez’s Don’t Breathe (trailer here), which opens nationwide today.

Detroit’s population has fallen below 700,000 yet its murder rate is eleven times what we have here in sprawling, unruly New York City. It is not uncommon to see one lone house standing amongst the razed ruins of formerly residential neighborhood. Rocky, her slimy boyfriend Money, and the torch-carrying Alex think they will find a big score inside one of them. Supposedly, the owner is a blind veteran, who received a large cash settlement when a well-heeled Grosse Pointe teenager killed his daughter in a hit-and-run.

Alex is sort of the inside man. His father works for a security company, so he has access to their alarm codes. Ordinarily, he insists on strict ground rules. The total haul should be under ten grand and include no cash. That way they can avoid grand larceny charges. This job will violate all his terms, but he agrees anyway for Rocky’s sake. In retrospect, that will be a profound mistake.

Needless to say, the old man is spryer than they anticipated. In fact, he is pretty chiseled. He also has rather sinister reasons for not wanting any visitors. When the lights are out, he clearly holds home field advantage.

Admittedly, making the terrifying old man a veteran is a real buzz kill, but at least Alvarez and co-screenwriter Rodo Sayagues try not to belabor the point (unlike the aggressively disrespectful Dementia). Arguably, it is the quickest credible explanation for why an old blind cat would have a commando’s physique (being a cop wounded on the job could add unnecessary narrative complications).

In any event, there is a ton of sneaking around on tippy-toe in Breathe, which Alvarez executes quite adroitly. Ironically, some of the most intense sequences spell out of the inhospitable house, in part because they underscore just how on your own you are in some Detroit neighborhoods.

As always, Stephen Lang is massively hardnosed as the old man, whom he plays with extra crustiness and erratic twitchiness this time around. Jane Levy chokes back screams and holds her breath pretty effectively, but it is hard to get how she got involved with Money, Daniel Zovatto’s white trash caricature or Alex, the big nothing blandly portrayed by Dylan Minnette.

Alvarez keeps raising the stakes nicely, maintaining a tight, tense one-darned-thing-after-another pace. It is maybe not staggeringly original (one could argue it shares surface similarities with Viet Nguyen’s Crush the Skull and Adam Schindler’s Intruders, both of which are even better), but it gets the genre job done. Recommended for horror fans, Don’t Breathe opens in theaters across the country today (8/26), including the AMC Empire in New York.

Band of Robbers: Huck & Tom, Together Again

Tom Sawyer is no more likely to paint fences in 2015 than he was in 1876. He is both cop and robber, but he really sees himself as a hero and a treasure hunter. Unfortunately, his wild schemes inevitably cause trouble for his ex-con best friend, Huckleberry Finn in Band of Robbers (trailer here), Aaron & Adam Nee’s modern day re-conception of Twain’s beloved stories, which opens today in New York.

Finn never squealed on Sawyer when he went up the river, even though it was his friend’s fault. That allowed the gung-ho Sawyer to get a job as a patrolman, sort of like his detective half-brother, Sid. When Finn is paroled, he quickly learns Sawyer is still obsessed with the legendary Murrell’s gold. For some reason, Sawyer thinks Injun Joe has stashed the pirate treasure in a pawnshop, so he hatches a hair-brained armed robbery scheme to take it. Yes, he is still called Injun Joe, but the Anglo villain has a politically correct defense of his nickname at the ready.

Inconveniently, Sawyer is assigned a new partner on the very day of the hold-up. Of course, that would be Judge Thatcher’s daughter, Becky. Sawyer takes an immediate shine to her, but she will complicate his plan to run interference for Finn and their accomplices. Finn was supposed to pick up a day laborer to be their getaway driver, but since their knucklehead friends over slept, he is forced to recruit the Widow Douglas’s illegal gardener, Jorge JIMinez.

Band is just the sort of movie that wears down your resistance over time. In many ways, the Nee Brothers have quite cleverly modernized the grown-up (if not necessarily mature) Twain characters and the source material that made them famous. However, Tom Sawyer and Adam Nee (who plays him) try way, way, way too hard. Granted, Sawyer is supposed to be recklessly enthusiastic, but he often brings to mind “Kung Fu” Eliott “White Lightning” Scott, which is a profoundly unfortunate place to be.

On the flipside, the reserved and somewhat embarrassed looking Kyle Gallner’s Finn serves as an accessible and identifiable audience surrogate. He and Nee are like oil and water, but they develop some pleasant bantering buddy chemistry. Hannibal Buress also gets off some of the films better lines as Sawyer and Huck’s dim-witted crony, Adam Rogers, while Stephen Lang adds some dependable villainous seasoning as Injun Joe.

When Band of Robbers takes its Ritalin and gets serious about finding Murrell’s treasure, it actually starts to hit it is stride. There is just something nostalgically charming about treasure maps and mysterious keys. However, the film suffers from a surplus of quirkiness in the first two acts. It is almost too clever and too eager to please for its own good. Okay for Twain diehards who prefer their films loud and desperately earnest, Band of Robbers opens today (1/15) in New York, at the AMC Empire.

Pioneer: Diving for Oil

It makes perfect sense George Clooney would sign up for the remake of this Norwegian film. It includes two of his favorite activities: scuba diving and blaming America. It is the early 1980s, when Norway is poised to become enormously wealthy thanks to the discovery of oil in the North Sea. Evidently, that is a bad thing. Constructing a pipeline to reach it will be a tricky proposition. Two advanced deep sea diver brothers are supposed to do the hardest parts, but they will be engulfed by a shadowy conspiracy in Erik Skjoldbjærg’s Pioneer (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

As Pioneer opens, Petter is about to make history for enduring the deepest simulated dive. He will also start hallucinating. Can we ever really trust his perceptions going forward? It is hard to say, because Skjoldbjærg never overtly plays the ambiguous reality-untrustworthy POV cards. Near as we can tell, Petter just shakes off his light-headedness and moves on to the next mission. This time he and his brother Knut will be diving for real. However, since the American engineering firm has assumed operational control, they will now be breathing in the Yanks’ double-secret oxygen tank additive.

Of course, the dive goes spectacularly bad, culminating in Knut’s death. Frankly, it kind of-sort of looks like Petter’s fault, but others quite considerately step forward to take the blame. A-ha, it must be the additive. If he can just get a sample to a colleague, he will be able to prove, well he’s not quite sure what, but something really bad.

Forget the unreliable narrator, Pioneer gives us an unreliable script. Credited to Skjoldbjærg and a battery of three other screenwriters, it keeps the conspiracy ridiculously murky. Basically, all we can glean with certainty is the Americans will do anything for oil and there is a man with a limp out there up to no good.

On the plus side, Pioneer perfectly channels the atmosphere and vibe of paranoid 1970s thrillers, like Parallax View. As Petter (whose entire wardrobe seems to be corduroy), Aksel Hennie looks so Seventies, it is almost tragic. He also projects a quiet mania that really helps the film chug along. Wes Bentley and Stephen Lang chew a bit of scenery as the villainous Americans, but they never elevate their stock characters above the level of predictable cliché. Likewise, Miss Bala’s Stephanie Sigman is largely wasted as Knut’s widow Maria, who simply turns up from time to time to pretend she’s not guilt-tripping Petter when she really is.

Ambiguity can be a powerful element in cinema, but viewers should have a sense it is all part of the filmmakers’ deliberate strategy. In the case of Pioneer, it just feels like they lost track of the possible implications of early scenes. Technically, it is an impressive package, especially the work of cinematographer Jallo Faber, who makes early 1980s Norway look so dingy and depressed, it pretty much justifies whatever whoever may or may not have done to hasten the oil boom. The result is an odd curio of a film that simply cannot justify Manhattan ticket prices. It opens this Friday (12/5) in New York at the Cinema Village.

In the Blood: Gina Carano Misplaces Her Husband

You would think two recovering addicts would go to a tightly controlled “Club Med” environment for their honeymoon. Instead, the Grants visit the most corrupt island in the Caribbean. They stay on the wagon, but even more serious problems develop. When the new Mr. disappears, the new Mrs. will unleash all her street-fighting skills to find him in John Stockwell’s In the Blood (trailer here), the newest vehicle for MMA star Gina Carano, which opens this Friday.

Ava’s father Casey was an original hardcase, who taught her how to fight good and hard. Even during her strung out days, following his untimely demise, she could take care of her would be predators. She cleaned up when she met the well-heeled Derek Grant in rehab. His father is not exactly thrilled with their union, but has stopped fighting it. Aside from a little dust-up in a club, their honeymoon is all very sweet and romantic—until the zip-line accident.

Unfortunately, that is not even the worst of it. Mysteriously, the ambulance carrying Grant to the central hospital never arrives with the patient. Of course, the fat and lazy police chief is happy to shift suspicion onto his ex-junkie wife, finding a receptive ear in old man Grant. Determined to find her husband, Ava Grant sets out to give the Jack Bauer treatment to every lying witness and corrupt cop in her path.

In the Blood is a pretty straight forward martial arts programmer, but it maintains Carano’s viability as an action star. There are several down-and-dirty fight sequences that nicely showcase her chops. She also gets nice support from a colorful cast of supporting characters, including Luis Guzmán and Danny Trejo (who kills it in his final scene). It is also impressive to see Stephen Lang continues to get rougher and tougher with age during his brief flashback scenes as dear old dad. As a Twilight alumnus, Cam Gigandet does not inspire much confidence, but he manages to scratch out some okay chemistry with Carano.

For genre fans, In the Blood could be considered the rough equivalent of early Van Damme films. The plots were never extraordinary, but they were serviceable enough to build up his credibility as an action star and a romantic lead. In the Blood serves the same function for Carano, even with its unfortunate and potentially spoilery title. Stockwell does an okay job framing the action, but he is no Isaac Florentine, let alone a Dante Lam or Wilson Yip.

Still, Carano delivers on her end. She has screen presence and chops. In the Blood will not take her to the next level, but it will keep her existing fanbase engaged and ready for more. Enjoyable as a quality B-movie with serious MMA aptitude, In the Blood is recommended for genre enthusiasts when it opens this Friday (4/4) in New York.