Montana

In the Revenge action movie sub-genre, "Montana" is a great protégé movie with compelling characters, a ton of growling (LOVE that! LOL), and great fight scenes.

I highly recommend it and hope you enjoy the morality. It's always good to see the bad guys get their comeuppance. There's a ton of cursing and some of the characters are major jerks. So satisfying when they get taken down. There is some time spent developing the back story on the characters so you care what happens to them.

The title is a nod to Scarface in case you the miss the reference. At first I thought it was set somewhere in Eastern Europe but it turns out to be London's East End. Bits of it reminded me of John Wick.

What a throwback - into the 80s and 90s. Action movies like this were made back then, with a similar amount of violence and a similar "story" (bare minimum). It is the action scenes that will leave an impression on you. If you care for them that is. The story is not really something you will remember long after watching the movie.

Also Mads Mikkelsen brother - you may not know him, but once you see his name it's like: of course. I first really saw him in House of Cards and even though he is far removed from a Russian or a Serbian, it seems like eastern european is written all over his face. And he really convinces in those roles. A second skin and all that. So sit back, watch the mayhem unfold and enjoy the show if you can

This was on Tubi and looked worth a try- The movie starts out violently but with the main bad guy in shadow, then moves to a more current time and the same over-the-top violence occurring, but the bad guy is obvious.

There's a teen in the movie and it is expected that other teens will watch, but the levels and intensities of violence at the start is ruthless and unnecessary imo to establish that the bad guy is bad. He proved that when he wanted someone killed in his crew that was untrained and an easy mark. That's it- then the movie could have proceeded from there and worked great. The violence to Lars' character would have been better done in flashes of memory. Then teens could watch the rest of the film with various homage to Leon, John Wick, Karate Kid- and other favorites, i'm sure.

There are a couple big plot holes, esp the kid being trained so well, bad guys missing shots at nearly point-blank range, attempts at religion and emotional range- but the story is engrossing enough to help you get past all that.

Lars is stellar and made it look easy. For me, he came out of nowhere and reminds me of a young Lance Henriksen. I expect we'll see more of him in the future.

Montana was one of those movies I had no idea how well it would play out when I started watching it. Lets just say I was pleasantly surprised. This movie format will play similar to the movie "Leon (1994)" and that is a positive comparison to make as both movies played out really well in he form of redemption revenge flick. The story set in the mean streets of UK featuring a good mix of dirty cops, crooked gangsters and Russian mobsters

I like the way Montana character is developed and he is a believable confused kid. The other actors also did well in there parts.

The Good: Good build up of the story, good character development and action sequences. The soundtrack was done well to emphasis emotion at the right moments.

The Bad: It stretches your imagination as to how adept Montana character becomes at fighting but hey its a movie.

The Ugly: The raw, gritty crime world lingering in London (thats ugly in a good way).

Overall quite raw and powerful performances by all this movie deserves more praise.

I almost didn't look at it over the low ratings I'm glad I ignored them and watched it. The movie is 8 or 9 star movie not a 5 star. It's a must watch it's one of them hidden gems.