Hounds of War

While the film is long winded in the exposition of locales at times, I think it's a solid B action movie. I'm not sure why anyone would call it trash as it's better than 90% of the stuff being made today. It has a solid cast, and the acting is on par with a film of its caliber, if not better. The action is well done and if it had any real fault, I would say it's the editing. There is a little too much filler to seemingly pad the runtime and I'm not a fan of starting a movie with a scene and then travelling back in time to see how the protagonist got to this point. It never works. I didn't like it in John Wick and I don't like it anywhere else. It's basically a movie spoiler shown up front.

Hollywood should stop being scared of making shorter movies. I would easily accept a 75-minute B movie with good pacing that kept you in the meat of the story.

Overall, this movie was enjoyable, and I watched it all the way through, which is more than I can say for a lot of other movies recently.

First let me say that I'm a fan of Grillo - he always holds his own and never needs cast direction, thus why even newb/terrible directors seek him out as he makes them look good. However, that also means he'll keep doing B movies, and I feel he deserves better than that, as he's been in a few of my top B films.

Yesterday I saw him in Long Gone Heroes and I was really disappointed in that movie. It was very slow and the long 2 hour runtime dragged on and felt much longer in a cliched storyline that was rather dull and boring. I rated that movie a generous 4/10.

Today I saw Hounds of War, and I enjoyed it much more. Sure it's not a perfect film, and there certainly were many plot and technical issues, bad editing, and the directing had some flaws, BUT the storyline kept me engaged (and sort of unique and not riddled with the typical cliches), and had excellent pacing and non stop action and suspense. The 95 min runtime flew by almost too fast. Even the action scenes (although not perfect) were much better than yesterday's movie. Plus the set/location shoots were beautiful, and I've never seen Malta as beautifully as it was shown in this movie. So from an eye-candy perspective, this movie was amazing, not to mention the beautiful and lovely Rhona Mitra was very easy on the eyes. Plus the soundtrack theme song at the end (Vladtoseeu - Nosence, you're welcome) was amazing, and I've already added it to my playlist.

So this movie had lot's going for it, and undeserving of all the current 1-3/10's from the wannabe critics. Go see Long Gone Heroes, that once certainly deserves those low scores. This is a very well done B movie and deserving of the 7/10 from me.

This isn't a bad film, but it's also not a good film. I don't really understand, as Issac has made a whole heap of fantastic movies. Ninja 2, Undisputed 2 etc, with this movie having scenes that go on for far too long.

The movie could easily drop 30 minutes and tell the exact same story. Scene for scene. The big fight scene in the middle ish of the movie.. sped up far too much. The pacing is off.

Again, it's not a bad film, but it's never going to be a great film. Shame. Frank and Rhona rock, as always, but that's not enough to save the movie. The camerawork is fantastic, great colour grading and the story isn't bad. Oh well. Next.

Colonel Hart (Robert Patrick) directs operative Ryder (Frank Grillo) and his comrades on a mission in Libya. It's a trap. The task force is massacred. Sole survivor Ryder recruits Selina (Rhona Mitra) and goes on a revenge mission.

This is strictly an action B-movie. The writing is clunky. The story is simple to the point of simplistic. I'm not getting lost here, but I am getting bored. This movie is boring whenever there is no action. There is some interesting action, but nothing ground-shaking. There is a nice chase through the narrow streets of Malta, but like everything else in this movie, there are some clunky stuff whenever the action stops.

I think I'm being generous with this rating. Hounds Of War the latest film from prominent DTV director Issac Florentine and the second Grillo film of the year so far following Lights Out, is derivative, poorly paced and worst of all boring.

Robert Patrick can play roles like this in his sleep at this point. Same could be said for Rhona Mitra. Mitra and Grillo are supposed to play an ex couple here but without this movie telling you that you likely wouldn't know, since they have virtually no chemistry at all in their scenes together. Grillo even though he's the lead barely has any screen time or lines of dialogue for some odd reason. The action scenes feel drawn out and like pure visual noise to draw out the runtime and make up for the fact that this movie barely has a story.

Grillo has another movie, Long Gone Heroes also releasing this week. Hopefully it's better than this.