How can Tibor Takacs, a seasoned director with almost 50 directing credits, give us this type of nonsense? For starters, he failed miserably in directing his cast. Most held their own, considering, but many needed casting direction to show some emotions in their dialogue or facial expressions in most of the scenes. Michele Plaia's acting was stale and unconvincing, but a good director can easily direct even an amateur 5 year old actor with ease, so that's all on him. Takas also dragged out too many scenes, and failed with his slow pacing, that the normally 93 min runtime felt much longer.
Then you have four writers giving us a cliched screenplay, with some cringeworthy scenes, especially the dialogue in the meet-up at the casino at the very end. Even the Italian mobsters were hilariously over-cliched with some very cheesy dialogue. A fifth grade drama class could've come up with better dialogue.
It's too bad, because although not revolutionary, the story had some great ideas. Aside from all that, you have your typical B film score - loud and overbearing, but surprisingly the cinematography wasn't too bad. If you're a fan of Louis Mandylor, Randy Couture or Cam Gigandet, you may still enjoy this - if there's nothing else to watch. For me, it's a generous 5/10.
