Black Lotus

I didnt expect much from this movie, but I started watching it anyway because of the presence of Frank Grillo, who usually only stars in the better B-movies, but not this time around...

The bad: this is amateur night. It has got the look and feel of a cheaply produced television production and everything you can think of is below average.

Starting with a TON of terrible supporting actors. And the leading actors are void of any charisma. Frank Grillo only stars in this picture for a few minutes in a small supporting role.

Not any good then? I can say with 100% certainty that this movie aint any good whatsoever.

Black Lotus is a new action thriller directed by Todor Chapkanov. Before this film, he has directed more TV movies. He has helped as an assistant director with other larger cinema films such as The Hitman's Bodyguard and London Has Fallen.

Matteo Donner (Rico Verhoeven) is an ex-special service agent. After the loss of a friend who died on a joint mission, he has developed a sense of guilt that he still carries with him.

Once back in Amsterdam, he learns that the daughter of his dead friend has been kidnapped. Matteo is now doing everything he can to save her from the hands of the criminals who kidnapped her.

With this film, Rico Verhoeven is now trying to break through more as a serious actor, but he does run into some problems. Other people from the martial arts world who also tried this, such as Arnold Schwarzengger or Dwayne Johnson, ran into the same problems, because not everyone can just act without real experience. The American martial artists who tried to break through as actors were only more fortunate to be able to work with a more experienced film crew, which further helped them improve their acting.

Rico Verhoeven has the misfortune to work with a more novice and somewhat inexperienced film crew, who have not been able to help him and his beginning acting work to come across as a serious actor. If Rico wants to play in a movie again, he'd better choose a movie with a better and more experienced film crew. Thanks to this same problem, the rest of the film cast does not provide any special acting. American actor Frank Grillo tries to portray a good villain, but unfortunately does not get much room for this.

The story of the film is also written by a writer, who is also still at the beginning. The story soon comes across as filled with clichés from other action films. The film is reminiscent of a lesser version of films such as Commando or Taken, only less comical or exciting. The action scenes are otherwise entertaining, but unfortunately do not remain that original or special.

I went in knowing or at least suspecting this was not going to a blockbuster. Being Dutch I of course wanted to see Rico's first feature performance.

What I find most off putting is the accents of the actors. If one has to protray an American or other native Englsh speaking national, they should at least have the ability to speak the languange in the correct accent. Or just let them speak their own languange in certain scenes and not pretend to let them be American.

The action editing here and there was incoherant. In the fist action scene it was hard to follow who was who. The cinematography was ok though but I don't understand the blue darkening filter in the end scene. It was clearly day time.. Pacing was slow and in the slow moments I was checking my instagram feed more than the movie. I didn't mind the score too much.

The plot is failrly standard, nothing special. Rico's acting was actually not as bad as I feared but obviously not A-list level yet. The dialogues were pretty crappy however.

Not sure what Frank Grillo was doing in this movie but he has had his hits and misses to be honest. His acting is fine and what you would expect from him. The rest of the acting on point for... B-movies.

All in all it's one of these straight to DVD movies.

There's some nice scenery and decent cinematography, and an adequate score for a B film, but the rest is all underwhelming. Maybe casting a stronger lead may have made this film more watchable, because Rico Verhoeven can't act. I'm sure part blame goes to poor cast directing, but it seems the rest of the cast held their own, so I can't say for sure. Verhoeven was just too bland, expressionless and carried himself like a big doofus. He was ok I guess in the action scenes, although hard to tell from the poor fight choreography. The female Interpol agent had a better fight scene at the end and looked more like an action star than Verhoeven. The only person who carried most of the film was Grillo, who wasn't on screen much, and he deserves much better than this mess. The writing was just a bunch of variations and cliches from much better movies in this genre. Even at a mere 90 min runtime, the pacing was slow and the story lacked urgency and was underwhelming, and just dragged onto the next predictable scene after scene.

It's difficult to find the words to describe just how bad this movie is. The acting of everyone is abismal but I guess it's hard to act when the script is done by a beta version of ChatGPT that was trained on the worst B-movies of the 80s. There's even a shameless ripoff scene of the classic movie Amsterdamned (watch that one instead!) where a corpse is dragged over a sightseeing canalboat.

The cinematography is crap and it looks like they could afford 1 drone but were not allowed to fly it so they took quick illegals shots on 4 locations that you keep seeing.

And the action.... WHERE IS THE ACTION?!

There's I think 5 minutes worth of scenes that could be called 'action scenes'.