Lights Out

B movies should be fun and entertaining not trying to do Martin Scorcese. And why cast Scott Adkins if you're going to use him for five minutes?

There are at least ten different plots going on and none of them are good. Even the fight scenes are weak. Mekhi Pfeifer looks like he's been on a cheeseburger and pizza diet and Jaime King's hair is laugh out loud ridiculous.

This movie fails on every level. 85 minutes feels like three hours. This is a complete embarrassment for all involved. The director straight up steals the Jet Li Romeo Must Die X-Ray punch effects. And where did the 7 million budget go? Garbage.

Frank Grillo as a badass with impossible hair. Even after he slept he woke up with perfect hair? Little details, make a difference.

I didn't watch much of the trailer and did not realize that's based on "fight club", cage brawling.

The characters had potential, particularly the main baddies , but it all goes down like a dud firecracker.

Some of the plot at first was not so cohesive, for example, wondering who that guy was who was rummaging through that ladies house, only to find out that was her boyfriend? Very unlikely looking pair.

At the end of it all what I wanted to see was more of Scott Adkins who was barely in it. This was a Frank Grillo movie.

I came to see Scott, but it's not what I got.

So so film that lacked originality, suspense and true gripping action.

Former soldier Michael 'Duffy' Duffield (Frank Grillo) gets into a bar fight over a card game. Max Bomer (Mekhi Phifer) recruits him into his world of illegal underground fights. They start working for Sage Parker (Dermot Mulroney). His partner Ellen Ridgway (Jaime King) is an undercover cop.

There are a few good veteran actors here, but the movie can't escape the B-movie space. The filmmaking and the derivative story cannot elevate this movie. The last act becomes anti-climatic and perfunctory. There are a lot of little nits to pick. I kept waiting for a scene to excite me but it never comes.

No pun intended - the movie has quite the stellar cast - which makes it understandable if some may feel ... there could be more to it, than meets the eye (or the bullet for that matter). Also do not confuse this with the horror movie of the same name - this dangles and has action written all over it.

The action is decent, the stunts are overall well shot and the story is ok, I reckon. Do not expect too much of it of course - Frank Grillo seems to have taken over from Bruce Willis - in the sense that he was doing all those low budget movies ... Willis has his illness and obviously can't continue that road. It does it's best and I feel it is one of the better efforts he is a part of (big budget movies aside of course)

The good: we have some great B-movie actors present, who have made some solid (B-movie) action pictures before, like Frank Grillo and Scott Adkins. With even an actor like Dermot Mulroney starring my expectations for a straightforward fight movie were high...

The bad; but in the end this is not a straightforward action movie, it has got WAY too many uneventful talking scenes in which these B-movie actors try to act seriously. Problem is they cant act seriously. They can fight. But they cant act seriously. Letting these B-movie actors try to act seriously anyway is not wise, to put it politely... And I dont even wanna talk about the story...

Not any good then? It for sure isnt a terrible B-movie. They really tried hard to make it all look credible (at which they failed), but there are several other great Frank Grillo or Scott Adkins action movies out there which I would rather watch than this uneventful attempt at making a serious movie.