Zero Tolerance

When I stumbled upon this 2015 movie titled "Zero Tolerance", from writer and director Wych Kaosayananda, I had never even heard about it. But the fact that it had Scott Adkins on the cast list definitely helped sweeten the deal.

"Zero Tolerance", while certainly being a watchable movie, ultimately just turned out to be a bland and generic action thriller, without much of neither action nor thrills. So writer Wych Kaosayananda didn't exactly impress me with this 2015 movie.

The only familiar faces on the screen, for me at least, were actors Scott Adkins and Gary Daniels. I saw Kane Kosugi's name on the cast list, and assume he is related to Sho Kosugi, but I am not familiar with his acting performances or career. The acting performances in "Zero Tolerance" were fair.

Watchable, sure, but hardly a noteworthy action thriller. Nor is it a movie that will ever grace my screen a second time. And definitely not among the top of movies from Scott Adkins, whom was hardly in the movie at all.

My rating of writer and director Wych Kaosayananda's 2015 movie "Zero Tolerance" lands on a generous four out of ten stars.

Director Wych Kaos could only improve after releasing the awful TEKKEN 2, and while he does just that with ZERO TOLERANCE, he's still not making the movie that most viewers actually want to see. Talk about unmatched expectations! This film – a thriller disguised as an action feature - is probably the best movie that Kaos has ever done, but that's still not saying much.

The story: When the estranged daughter of an ex-CIA operative (Dustin Nguyen) turns up dead in Bangkok, he and his ex-partner (Sahajak Boonthanakit) delve into the city's underworld to uncover the young woman's shady past and unmask her killer.

To be fair, I don't think that the movie was ever explicitly advertised as a martial arts feature, but when the names used to promote it include Dustin Nguyen, Scott Adkins, Gary Daniels, and Kane Kosugi, one cannot help but expect a lot of hand-to-hand action. Disappointingly, the film does not even provide the bare minimum. There are two full-length brawls, only one of which counts as an actual karate fight (the Nguyen/Adkins showdown), and neither of them are very good – they could have been shot with anybody, with no need for some of the best on screen fighters to get involved. The action content in general is meager, with only three shootouts to otherwise tide viewers over. One of these – a close-range affair in a crowded room – is pretty enjoyable, but breathtaking action clearly isn't this film's objective.

This is a character-driven thriller, and in that regard, the movie isn't bad. Dustin and his costars all generally excel at playing morally ambiguous characters in a sleazy setting. The movie's pacing is infinitely better than the director's previous picture, and though this is not exactly SE7EN, I felt engaged and anxious to find out who the killer was. The eventual resolution is a serious matter of taste – either you'll find it ironically apt or a complete cop-out – but it highlights the earthy tone of the movie that may turn off people who are used to lighter fare. The subject of prostitution is questionable enough for some folks, but there's an odd, uncomfortable strain of chauvinism running through the picture, with abuse of women by both "good guys" and villains being a common occurrence despite the general anti-trafficking sentiment.

Apparently this movie was edited from an unreleased film, with the footage of Adkins and Kosugi shot a couple of years later. It's integrated pretty well – practically unnoticeable unless you know what to look for. This feat of seamlessness is easily the most impressive part of the movie, which otherwise ends up being relatively unremarkable. ZERO TOLERANCE isn't the debacle it could have been, but it's also not nearly as cool as I'm certain most people were hoping for. Know yourself well before considering anything more than a rental.

I watched this because I am a huge scott adkins fan. Boy was I dissapointed. Great action but Scott is barely in it.

Horrible movie! Why would anyone make a movie like that?!! why did they even bother wasting there money on its production?!! Why would this movie be in English? its all about Thai people they referred to them speaking only English to the fact that they were spy's in the US Army for 10 years?!!

There was no connection between the scenes awful conversations and scenario. Really don't understand how it got 7.5 rating when I got the tickets.

The camera angles were poor and the scenes chosen in the movie were also very poor,too many close shots on the face of the actors which had no expression on them, time wasting experience, the movie was pointless and they tried to fill the time line of the movie with any junk so they can have a full movie time. during the action and fight scenes you could not understand what exactly was going on. the sound effects were also poor, the gun shots sounded like something falling on a pillow not a gun shoot at all

The movie might be easy to spot and you probably won't be too surprised by the ending. But it's still nicely made, if you don't expect a martial arts romp that is. It seems that some people thought, that with all the names attached this would be a lot of hand-to-hand action and fighting. And while there is a certain amount of action, it's mostly "gunplay"/-fighting that is going on.

A fair warning (or whatever you want to call it): there is a lot of nudity in this movie, though it's almost entirely in the first 2-3 minutes. After that we see Mr. Adkins, but he's not the lead in this, so don't get confused by that either. It's a man on a mission, a different take on ... Taken.