Blackwater

Bounty hunters Wade (Luke Goss), Crenshaw (Bokeem Woodbine), Rose (Luciana Faulhaber), and Ronnie (Paul Sloan) are hired to go into Mexico to rescue Mae (Chasty Ballesteros). They are transporting the Chinese girl back to the States when she runs off. Cartel king Aguilar (Danny Trejo) wants her back alive.

The first half is a functional action B-movie. Danny Trejo is the obvious draw but he only has a supporting role. It's got the desert setting and what seems like a simple premise. Then it starts adding stuff and the movie struggles. It should have been so easy. It becomes muddled and bland. At some point, I stop caring.

A girl is on the run from someone or something. The bad guys catch up with her but just at that moment another group appears and rescues her.

This group is made up of bounty-hunters and grabbing her is their job. The main guy is Wade, his sidekick is Rose and there are two more guys.

This girl though is something else, she's not appreciative at all, doesn't have anything to say. At some point she escapes from these guys. In the meantime we learn that her captor is the big bad drug mobster around: Danny Trejo, who else. He's into young girls and wants to girl back at all costs.

The girl hides in some abandoned motel. Our bounty-hunters find her and decide to wait for Trejo's gang to show up. Now we learn that this girl does have something special. Somehow she knows stuff about our guys that she couldn't have known. At this point we get to hear all the relationship gossip among the group for some reason until the bad guys show up and the shootout ensues. Eventually we learn what's going on with the girl and it's a neat twist.

The Night Crew is a B-action movie that aspires to be a bit more than just that, but doesn't really succeed. Casting is strong with Goss, Trejo, Faulhaber. Sloan does a great job but his character doesn't get much camera-time unfortunately. The action is decent, direction is good, the writing could be better. The movie looks good, too. The problem is that there isn't really much of a central character to root for and for no good reason they decided to film the main part of this movie at night, which doesn't work all that well with action movies. The character of the girl, instead of being fascinating is instead somewhat annoying. I did appreciate the sexual tension between her and Rose though. Overall, the concept is pretty good but the script and execution needed more work.

Well, I can't exactly claim that I was harboring any great expectations to the 2015 action thriller "The Night Crew", but I still opted to watch it on the account of it being a movie that I hadn't already seen.

And yeah, I will say that the synopsis did sound interesting enough to catch my attention.

However, writers Paul Sloan and Christian Sesma only managed to put together a somewhat bland and mediocre movie here. The storyline is straight forward and very easy to follow, I will give them that much. But it is so simplistic that there almost is no plot really. So you can essentially start the movie, watch for a bit, then leave and come back later and still be up to speed with the events in the movie.

There are some familiar faces on the cast list, with the likes of Luke Goss, Danny Trejo, Bokeem Woodbine, Jason Mewes, Christine Nguyen and Don Swayze. The acting in the movie was actually fair enough, and you know what you get from these particular actors and actresses.

Visually then "The Night Crew" was adequate. I mean, it is not a movie that makes use of a lot of special effects, so you're not going to find yourself in for an amazing display of special effects. However, whatever effects were used actually served the movie well enough.

All in all, then director Christian Sesma put together a movie that was watchable enough for what it was, though you shouldn't expect a grand cinematic experience here. And while I did managed to sit through all 92 minutes it ran for, I only found myself semi-entertained. This is, however, not a movie that I will be returning to watch a second time.

My rating of "The Night Crew" lands on a four out of ten stars.

THE NIGHT CREW had promise, with an action-focused narrative utilising America's war on drugs as a backdrop, and a seasoned cast of B-movie faces who would no doubt do their best with the material at hand. Sadly, this turns out to be a film which hinges on the quality of the execution, and it just isn't that great.

The narrative is of the typical siege scenario, although it's cheaply-handled and plenty of it takes place at night to hide the paucity of the budget. The cinematography is poor and makes the film look cheap throughout, and the special effects of the shoot-outs and the like are merely ordinary. What's missing is suspense, something to keep you hooked to the unfolding action.

The cast is headlined by Luke Goss (HELLBOY II: THE GOLDEN ARMY) as the leader of the heroic bounty hunters. Goss is all right, but he has done better in the past, and he seems to be going through the motions here like the rest of the cast members. Reliable B-movie star Bokeem Woodbine is better as the gun-toting Crenshaw. Danny Trejo has an extended cameo, and there are more minor roles for players like Don Swayze and Jason Mewes. Chasty Ballesteros and Luciana Faulhaber are the women of the piece and both particularly poor in the acting stakes. As for the extra, horror-themed sub-plot, that seems to be tacked on to the movie as it bears no influence on the narrative whatsoever.

I mean it's another one of Danny Trejo's more indie like movies similar to Machete but if your into action flicks this one is definitely worth giving a watch. The ending has a serious twist that you may or may not see coming (I didn't). The acting isn't the most spectacular, but c'mon it's a low budget action movie and you get what you pay for.

I thoroughly enjoyed it, if you like the Machete series then I don't see why you wouldn't enjoy this. The plot revolves around a women connected to some big time cartel boss whom bounty hunters quasi-kidnap to take across the border for their bounty. Things don't necessarily go as planned and they maybe don't know enough about their bounty and or mission beforehand to accurately assess the situation and prepare accordingly. That's pretty much all you'll need to know, from there on its non stop firefights and fisticuffs with a little twist at the end.