Vigilante Diaries

Jason Mewes stars as vlogger Michael Hanover, who follows an avenger known as the Vigilante. The Vigilante (Paul Sloan) and his sidekick The Kid (Kevin L Walker) are feared for their violent tactics in taking down criminals. Hanover uploads their exploits on to the web and gets popular acclaim.

When the Vigilante takes on the wrong bad guy all hell lets loose as the dead man's brother goes after him for revenge. There are rifts with rivals gangs and shadowy US black ops types are hanging around in the background. There are lots of torture scenes, frenetic shootouts and hot looking bimbos. It is just that a lot of it makes little sense.

The film has good production values and some scenes are shot all over the world, bits of Glasgow with subtitles for people talking in a Scots accent, some footage in London and Armenia.

The plot feels disconnected and never hangs together. We get chapter titles making it look like that this was a Tarantino film and just to hammer the point home, we get a lot of bizarre talking from Micheal Madsen. As a violent action comedy, the story is not good enough.

First half of the movie was pretty straight forward b-action that worked pretty well, but then the second half just inexplicably decides to jump forwards in time one month, just in the middle of a crucial point for a couple of the leadcharacters.

And Michael Madsen without spoiling anything (I couldn't spoil it even if I wanted to as it's never explained) simply disappears from the movie, like literally he goes from being an important figure who just did something crucial for the plot to just never be seen again.

That's not really true he actually does show up in the last 5 minutes together with a person who died 10 minutes prior to that, so clearly that was a scene that was in actuality meant to be shown a lot earlier but I guess the editors thought that no one would notice and it somehow would make sense.

My only guess is that Madsen was problematic on set and he was fired or simply didn't show up anymore so that they had to put another character to take over where Madsen left off. And to be fair his performance suggests that he was barely trying to act.

Jason Mewes also randomly disappears in a crucial moment in the first half.

So yeah it was just all really weirdly put together, it's a shame because the movie had potential and it has a lot of entertaining standalone scenes and some entertaining characters (Rampage and Mewes most notably) but as a whole it doesn't make an iota of sense.

Acting? Bad. Writing? Bad. Directing? Bad.

This movie is so cheesy Michael Madsen and Eric Roberts were fighting over who would get a role.

I had been looking somewhat forward to the Vigilante Diaries after reading some interviews with the writer and star Paul Sloan. His enthusiasm for the movie had me intrigued.

The first thing that stands out from the movie is the excellent technical quality of the film. The production values of the movie definitely make Vigilante Diaries stick out from the DTV crowd. The bullet and blood effects are, although digital, done well and give the action a bloody, gritty feel.

The film is also shot in a number of location's, which is not usually seen in a DTV action movie. They travel to Russia, Glasgow, London and others. I ma assuming that Sloan and Sesma done this with their own money, to give the film an international feel. Unfortunately a lot of these scenes are not required and drag the film out. Although it was nice to see places like Glasgow in an American action movie It seems they were used just because the actor/director had the opportunity to visit these places.

Sloan as the Vigilante of the title, equips himself well as the lead. I don't think he will ever be a leading man, but is great at action, and I will look at the rest of his career with interest. Michael Jai White also shows up in a limited role, but does get a chance to show off some moves. Rampage Jackson is also good, in what is actually quite a humorous role. Of the leads, the only bum note is Jason Mewes, who is cringe worthy in some scenes, and wouldn't have been missed if he was cut from the film altogether.

As mentioned before, Director Sesma does a great job with the technical aspects of the film, and the action scenes are great. Unfortunately the film should have been edited down. Although the movie only runs to 105 minutes, it feels much longer due to some unneeded scenes. I feel bad complaining about a DTV movie being over ambitious considering some of the garbage that currently floods the market. At least I can say that it is miles better than some of the recent Steven Segal films and their like.

I would definitely recommend Vigilante Diaries to action fans, and would have given it a higher score if it wasn't for a few elements which bring it down a bit. Hopefully with Sesma's next film he will get everything right.

I look at the blurb before the cast and writer and director but it didn't take more than a few minutes into this movie to suspect it's a writer/director effort! He really should have stuck to cooking! It comes with a second writer who also stars but that's no great shakes of a recommendation.

It's not a dire action movie, but it does come with the usual action flick clichés, improbabilities (impossibilities!), set pieces, contrivances and, yes, stupidities (when you've got the guy where you want him, yeah, put the gun away and go hand-to-hand! Doh! Moron! (er, that's the writer(s)!)! The bad guys speak English for most of the movie but 2/3rds of the way through they start speaking in their native language and we're treated to subtitles. Oh dear...

Oh yes, the hip hop/rap music is crap, too!

But the movie mainly falls down in the explanation department. It could be me, but trying to follow who's who and who's done what to whom and why, got off to a bad start and didn't really get any easier. However, if you just go with the flow you can enjoy an action flick (with just a twinge of gratuitous torture) for what it is.

The performances are nothing to write home about but Michael Madsen does well (although he doesn't actually do much) but must have been looking for work.

It's all sort of OK, but not brilliant and there's the ever-present feeling that it should and could have been better.

If you've nothing else to do on a weekday night, give it a whirl, but have a few beers with it, accept it for what it is and wonder why you're watching this when you could be watching a 7* movie.