Hounds of War

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.

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.

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.

Underwhelming & boring right from start. Bad editing & audio effect; Most of the film sounded muffled with certain parts jumping up and down. The film is obviously another independent low budget relying on a couple B-list actors in order to help sell it. All the rest of the "actors" are just D-list nobodies with cringing acting. The first scene is just unrealistic..... the President would have more than just a handful of secret service visibly around. I just saw Gillo in another film that got released same day "Long Gone Heroes" which was slightly better; ratings between the 2 films proves it.

This is a bog standard B movie actioner with a surprisingly good cast. It is also pretty dark at times and cynical about politicians. The fight scenes are pretty good and the supporting cast is packed with minor martial artists from round the world.

Frank Grillo is always good value and Robert Patrick reprises his bad guy role from Season 3 of Reacher. He really does a good slime ball!

It clocks in at 90 minutes and is set in Malta which makes a change, although Accident man 2 was also filmed there so maybe they offer tax breaks. The only thing it lacks is Scott Adkins doing his terrible American accent to make it the perfect Friday night no brainer!