Shrapnel

This review will be spoiler free. The premise of the movie being a former soldiers daughter was abducted in Juarez, Mexico and the father went looking for his daughter in Juarez. Trouble followed him back home to Texas.

The premise is good, has potential but the actual movie is incredibly slow to get moving and the script, production and acting are D grade, even beneath midday, telemovie, standards.

I paid a paltry $4 for the rental of this movie from Prime and believe I was dudded, it's that poor I don't think it even has a viewing value of $4.

No pun intended - especially because it is the father in this case who is really looking for her ... and there is a different case to be made than the book/movie I am referring to in my summary headline. If you like B-action movies this may float your boat - but there are better movies of course, even in this category.

Still it has a bad boy - I mean a Lost Boy (well not the group per se, but from the movie) and other actors you may recognize. I'd say a pretty decent cast - one that does work overall too. Story is easy to follow (that is me being nice I reckon), still suspension of disbelief is more than necessary to have fun with this.

"You promised to keep us safe. You didn't."

Shrapnel is directed by William Kaufman and stars Jason Patric and Cam Gigandet.

After releasing The Channel earlier this month William Kaufman is back with a revenge thriller in the vein of Taken and Rambo: Last Blood. Unfortunately I didn't think this was as good as The Channel but that was sort of a high bar to live up to well at least in terms of DTV movies. I didn't think this was a total misfire either there are definitely some redeeming qualities here.

I actually thought this movie was too short surprisingly and I feel like this could've benefited from actually showing Sean's (Jason Patric's) daughter getting kidnapped in the beginning or maybe a few more scenes between Gigandet and Patric to further flesh out their relationship. Unfortunately this also suffers from pretty weak writing and I blame Chad Law and Johnny Martin Walters for that. Johnny Martin Walters only other writing credit is a Steven Seagal movie from 2019. Chad Law is actually a pretty prolific writer in the DTV space having written last year's Ryan Kwanten led Section 8, as well as this year's Tubi Original The Getback and the abysmal movie The Flood starring Nicky Whelan. Luckily Law's writing is better here but it's still not great.

For the positives I thought Jason Patric was good here and he actually sold the emotional scenes pretty well. Cam Gigandet is also pretty good here and adds some charisma to this that's needed but he unfortunately barley has any screen time. Kaufman does what he does best and turns this into a pure home invasion shoot em up during the last 15 minutes which was the best part of the movie for me. All the action scenes here are good and Kaufman is the main reason for that but I feel like they were lacking compared to The Channel. With a better script and more emotional depth for the characters this could've been way better.

Former Marine Sean Beckwith (Jason Patric) is searching for his missing daughter in Mexico. Max Vohden (Cam Gigandet) is his war buddy.

I come into this knowing that it's a B-movie. When the daughter says "You promised you'd keep us safe. You didn't.", I realized that this is going to be badly written, too. This is an old school Rambo action flick where the good guys take out dozens of bad guys. Sean is never going to get killed and the daughter is certain to be rescued. That's the part which seems to be annoying most critics. I'm not as annoyed with that. It doesn't help that car doors and flimsy walls become bulletproof in this world. It's all badly written. Sean should have taken the cartel brother hostage and make a prisoner exchange. Instead, two guys are going into Mexico to take on the cartel home base. Of course, nothing can go wrong.

For a low budget film, this was pretty good. It reminds me of Rambo Last Blood, but with a better outcome and ending. It's not perfect by any means, but it's entertaining and the fight scenes are really well done. Yes, the story has been done before, but so has almost every story out there these days. The camera work was blurry at times as well, but not enough to interfere with the movie. I liked it for a B movie and would love to see more like this.

However, my biggest gripe with the movie was that some of the actors and actresses could have been better picked. The wife just didn't act very good and the brother of the cartel leader didn't exactly look like a tough man or scary. The scene with the wife in bed was painful to watch and the brother acting tough when attacking the house was too, but everything else was pretty good.