Black Lotus

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.

I understand Rico Verhoeven has a dream to make it as an actor! But is there no one who can tell him he simply has no screen presence nor charisma on the big screen. Even if the the script, dialogue, direction and other elements were on point this still would've been a bust! Frank Grillo is a solid actor with some good work under his belt. Rico has the same but not in acting! It is remarkable that no one slammed the breaks on this train wreck. Rico seems to be a stand up guy with qualities but this is not it. Action stars are seldomly great actors but they often have a presence that compensates! I would think twice at taking another run at this. I would rather not do it than do it (this) badly! There have been very few actors of Dutch origin who were able to carve out a decent career in the US / english language movies and they could actually act. I doubt this will be even remotely successful in the Netherlands let alone internationally!

Luckily the movie looks really cheap so they might make a euro when all is said and done. A sequel seems completely out of the question and who would want one? I do hope Rico wins his next match in the ring though, that's were he stands out!

I went to the premiere om wednesday. Dutch studio's should really stop making action movies. This movie belongs on Netflix...or even better, just make it a free gift on the next Glory PPV.

The only reason I gave this movie a chance was because I'm a fan of fightsports, so Verhoeven and Grillo caught my attention. But the dialogues and the accents really ruined the movie. You really need subtitles to understand Marie Dompnier her English. The action and 'flashback' scenes are full of B-movies cliches and not in a fun way as you would expect from like a Van Damme or Stallone movies these days.

I'm really sorry for Frank Grillo. He didin't deserve this review, he's a good actor in my opinion.

I really couldn't stand it anymore after the first half...so I walked out. I have never done this before in my whole life.

The only thing worse then this movie....was the fact that I forgot my keys and had to go back.

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'.

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.