Instant Death

This is pretty bad. Tries to be "John Wick" but without the budget. Or cinematography. Or fight choreography. Or editing. If you somehow stick around through this collage of imitation scenes that we've all seen somewhere before, you'll notice that director Ara Paiaya generously credits himself as the DP, editor, visual effects supervisor, action director, fight choreographer, Lou Ferrigno's martial arts instructor, music supervisor, and colourist. I like this, because it makes it easy to know who to blame for how horrible this movie is; Paiaya clearly doesn't know much about how to do any of those jobs, and doesn't care to spend the budget to get people with real experience to handle them. I like this as well, since trying to do high octane action on the budget of a production meeting means we get some truly unintentionally hilarious stuff. I guess what I'm saying is that while I enjoyed watching this movie, I can only recommend it to other masochists, so it's gonna get a 4/10. Eh, make that a 3.

If you look in an encyclopedia for something along the lines for 'Writing a script in Kindergarten'... there's a picture of this film. The lines are delivered just like they're being read. The plot is thin. A poor excuse for some violence.

Instant Death is your stock-standard "they hurt my family now I want revenge" movie that is pretty much a trope on it's own now. That in itself isn't a bad thing. I love that kind of movie.

These movies in general require a bit of leeway as far as script writing, acting, and general believability goes, and that is fair because these are not documentaries. But this movie really does abuse that leeway.

Razor as the "main bad guy" has about all the charisma of a cardboard box. But I do get the feeling that the actor playing him is doing everything he can with a script that feels like it might have been written by a 15 year old in between watching Death Wish, Taken and Rambo and deciding he can write better.

The fight scenes have no weight, I have honestly seen better fight choreography from uni student film projects. The plot is laughably bad and hard to believe even for a character as unhinged as "Razor".

The movie constantly dances on the line of being "so bad it's good" to straight up just "bad" but it finally bulldozes over that line with the incredibly underwhelming showdown with the main antagonist, which really felt like the 15 year old I mentioned earlier suddently realised he was going to run out of paper.

I talk a lot about the character of "Razor" because he is the only character you end up getting attached to. Even the main protaganist (John Bradley) is completely forgettable - an impressive feat of poor script writing considering it's Lou Ferrigno.

It's a movie that spends about an hour getting you ready for the ultimate ride of your life. But once the credits begin to roll, the movie will lie down, stretch out and smoke a cigaratte. You on the other hand will sneakily open your drawer and look for something else.

This could have been great !!!! BUT Acting was awful, the editing was horrendous so many errors , the score levels were all wrong as well , apart from the odd action sequences which were ok , this has a very low budget feel , not a bad thing as I do like low budget movies if there done well, I thought that it went to far with the amount of deaths on the estate with the police not doing sod all unrealistic !!!! I thought the razor character was awesome very well acted . Apart from that . Disappointed.

No pun intended - I really like Lou Ferrigno! He seems like a cool guy. Also while we don't have insane stunts here, they are quite solid and you can see that he does some stuff himself. He can move his hands and feet (looking at you Seagal - it's about that time to stop for you). Having said all that, maybe it wasn't the best idea to do that either - yes it plays a bit like Death Wish (I used the german title as summary line, though fans of Hulk or rather Lou will get a different kind of joke out of this too).

The bigger issue though is not the been there and done that part of it all! No it is that there seems a lack of acting ability for most involved. And while you won't watch this for that reason ... it would not have hurt if there was more gravitas to it. Not to mention that some of the violence is almost comical ... not in a good way. You really have to suspend your disbelief ... a lot.