Renegades

Unstylised, dreadful editing, out of sync shoddy sound effects and unmemorable music gave this souped up sweeny the feel its budget was about £10.89p The whole thing was uncomplimentary; the thugs were made to be remedials. Thick as planks. Thugs in Heat or Narcos are given intelligence because it raises the stakes and give us intrigue. The script was boring and predictable; I was honestly guessing correctly was the next line was throughout.

This lot could have been taken from the bullies at my secondary school in 1978, not one charismatic among them. Even the fights were crude at best like they were slapped together after 8 pints of lager. To me the whole film looked like it was made by a bunch of drunks from start to finish. The saving grace were the night shots across London which looked good.

Some of the casting choices in this movie are ridiculous. A mid seventies Stephanie Beecham playing an active senior police officer, and the actor playing the female detective pumped so full of fillers that she can't even deliver her lines clearly. She might actually be half decent if she could speak clearly and looked like she could be a police officer.

I didn't mind the low budget feel, I enjoyed We Still Kill The Old Way and this is in the same vein with similar older British stars, plush the bonus of Danny Trejo.

It's an ok film to pass 90 mins but it does make some terrible casting choices.

This film came as close to me giving a film 1/10 as I've ever been, it's truly appalling. The writing is truly terrible and people who produce this standard of story content have no business writing anything. They clearly are just not ready or talented enough to produce anything for public consumption.

I would be hard pressed to let friends or family litmus test anything this bad, and I'm not saying this to be cute. The writing is simply atrocious, and but for the standards that have slithered below sea level in the past few years as independant films become more easily and cheaply produced, this film would never have been made.

However! Even the writing bad as it is cannot compete with the direction which defines a new level in incompetence and ineptitude. It's actually quite something that direction can be so misguided that it can even make reasonably competent actors look like they're performing in their first grade school play.

There is little point in going into detail on any other aspect of the film since the fundamentals are so underwhelming, but suffice to say, this films stinks.

I know people tend to say flippant things like 'worst film I've ever watched' etc, with movies they dislike and I can for once understand the sentiment. Truthfully, I've seen many worse films, but this IS the worst film I've seen in 2022 which is some accolade.

I love London gangster revenge movies so I was looking forward to this one as it has some stellar cast members. Unfortunately it also has some bad actors and some poor writing. One of the worst cast members is married to the writer. Go figure.

Ian Ogilvy is, as always, a delight. The underrated Paul Barber is superb and Billy Murray does what he does best. So nice to see Lee Majors on screen again. However, Stephanie Beacham is far too old to be playing a serving senior police officer and looks as if she is on life support. Sothcott is hopelessly miscast as a Detective Inspector. She can't act and looks like a victim of a botched Botox procedure. And it's all a bit confused. She carries a gun but clearly nobody showed her how to use it and why would a DI in London be carrying a gun on a routine enquiry anyway.

The writing is clichéd and some of the dialogue is pathetic. I felt sorry for the actors who had to deliver it but hopefully they all had a nice pay day.

And that leaves Patsy Kensit. She has a strange role that tries to pull it all together and give the story meaning but she doesn't pull it off. The blurb say 4 old SAS soldiers get together but the lead goodies clearly says he was in the Royal Anglian and wears their beret. Such inaccuracy in the trailer info says it all.

Very disappointed.

The entire production felt geriatric; from the cliched 80's story, to the cheesy dated dialogue and poor attempts at humor. The directing by seasoned director Daniel Zirilli was horrid and very amateurish. I've seen better directing from first-time filmmakers. The entire film had zero urgency and just trotted along from scene to scene - of which also had terrible transitions from just as bad editing. The score was just too constant and annoying. You'd think having two writers at least one could come up with something original and unexpected, but instead, it was all cliched, done many times before - much better, and fully predictable. At least the cast actually seemed like they were enjoying themselves constantly downing pints, and hopefully Majors and Trejo at least got a free trip to the UK for this underwhelming production. However some of the secondary cast did seem like they needed better cast-direction, of which Zirilli failed to give. And Jeanine Nerissa Sothcott as detective Moore needs to chill with the duck-lips botox, that's just cringe to look at. It was also funny to see Tom Lister Jr. Literally call his lines in. You wont miss anything passing on this film, even if you're a fan of Trejo, Majors or Mandylor.