Recoil

Ryan (Steve Austin) is a former cop who turned vigilante after his family is murdered. He's come to town to take on Drayke Salgado (Danny Trejo) and his gang who controls everything. Darcy (Serinda Swan) runs the hotel.

This is a lower budget TV movie made in Canada. They're a dime a dozen nowadays. This one has the interesting combo of Austin and Trejo. Austin plays a bit too wooden. Trejo is his usual bad guy persona. The movie really just suffers from a lack of imagination and action. There isn't much in the way of story. There are some fights, some guns, some explosions, but none of it is that impressive. There's just isn't anything special to recommend in this movie. The closest comes from a minor stage fight between Keith Jardine and Steve Austin. I would pay to see these two do the real thing.

First of all, I should mention that I enjoy a lot of made-for-video movies, so you might understand why I was pumped up when I got my hands on a copy of RECOIL, because it starred not only Steve Austin, but Danny Trejo. However, I have to confess that I felt somewhat let down by the end results. The production values are okay, though some of the photography has that dark look you find in a lot of other low budget Canadian movies. But the screenplay is lacking, making a lot of time go by between action sequences, and containing plot elements and characters we have see A LOT before in other B movies. The action sequences, when they do come, aren't very exciting. And while Steve Austin and Danny Trejo do bring some presence to the movie simply by showing up, they don't deliver that much more - maybe they too found this story routine and predictable as well, and didn't think it was worth the effort to be more energetic. I guess the movie deserves some praise for giving some of my fellow Canadians some work in front of and behind the camera - but that's about all that's positive about this movie.

It opens with ex-cop, Ryan (Steve Austin) arriving at a small town called Hope with an agenda, which is to seek retribution to the criminals responsible (shown in flashbacks throughout) who wiped out his entire family. And when he arrives, he arrives by driving a 1968 Plymouth GTX, booked himself to a motel/ inn owned by a young widowed, Darcy (Serinda Swan). While there, and as it turns out, the town is overrun by a motorcycle gang called "The Circle" gang lead by Drayke (Danny Trejo) for the intention of illegal activity including guns and drugs. And it isn't long before Ryan's first victim happens to be Drayke's younger brother Rex (Noel Gugliemi) whose supposed to be an alleged ped before he slowly goes after the rest of the gang.

One of the main problems of this movie is the fact that although, Drayke played by Trejo is a known criminal who deals with guns and drugs, that he does not really use any guns against Ryan until more of his own men are killed, until it's to Austin's convenience but it could be the result ex wrestler Steve Austin who's also credited as "executive producer" and that they were unable to afford a dummy car.

"I think you know why I'm here." After the murder of his wife and child former cop Ryan Varrett (Austin) becomes obsessed with revenge and justice. When he gets to the town of Hope he finds what he is looking for. I have always wondered why wrestlers (who pretty much act for a living) have never been good movie actors. I liked Stone Cold when he was wrestling but as an actor he is quite bad. This is a hard movie to review for me. The opening five minutes were so bad I was laughing and wanted to turn it off, but the longer it went on the more I liked it. I'm not sure if it was because it was actually a good movie or if I just got used to it. I think I mainly liked it because of the idea. I loved "Boondock Saints" and while it's impossible to compare the two, any movie about a vigilante who doses out his own justice to those who fall through the cracks is OK with me. Overall, Steve Austin's best movie so far (which isn't saying much). I recommend this though. I surprisingly give it a B+.

Yeah yeah here we go again, another try by Stone Cold Steve Austin trying to be an actor, so far all his films are the forgettable type. But not this one, no way there is a road to the Oscars for this film, but I was entertained and thought the acting was OK, good supporting cast, not bad fighting scenes, and loved that American muscle car.

I sort of felt like I had seen this film before as the story line has been done before in other films, it sort of felt like an early Schwarzenegger 80's action kind film, OK to watch, and good enough for me to say Steve has lost that B grade tag.

I would give it a 7.5, but the great IMDb would only let me pick a 7 or a 8, not good enough for a 8, so 7 is more than a fair score.