Main cast: Tom Berenger (Nick Falconi), Cam Gigandet (Anthony Vanowen), Hani Al Naimi (Hussein bin Farri), Jonathan Avigdori (Sadiq), and Jeff Fahey (LaRusso)
Director: Tibor Takács
You know, I can only suspend my disbelief so much. In Black Warrant, Tom Berenger looks like he’s 80, moves like he’s deadly afraid that he’d break a hip, and he’s playing Nick Falconi, a retired special ops fellow that is apparently so, so amazing that his former boss LaRusso pulls him out of his cozy retirement to take down bad people.
Seeing Mr Berenger here acting like a sad old man forced to play this role for who knows why only has me wondering whether there is a sudden shortage of washed-up wrestlers that would surely be happy to play this role for cheap. Mr Berenger only ranks above Joe Biden as the perfect candidate to lead an action film—anyone else would likely be more convincing. Hulk Hogan has a lot of free time, right?
Heck, switch the roles of Mr Berenger and Jeff Fahey and the movie becomes 100 times more believable and less of a “Let’s feel all degrees of embarrassment for poor Tom!” affair.
Meanwhile, Cam Gigandet plays…
Oh hush. Some people watch anything with Colin Firth in it because they think doing so will somehow form a connection between him and their ovaries. Go make fun of them and leave me to watch bad movies just to look at his pretty face, alright.
Anyway, he plays Anthony Vanowen, a DEA agent out to avenge his partner that was predictably gunned down by a goon of a uber crime boss that Nick is also going after.
Naturally, they cross paths, don’t like one another at first, only to partner up to take down their mutual enemy, become BFFs… we all know the story, don’t we?
Okay, the worst thing about this one is that Mr Gigandet’s clothes stay on. I don’t know why. The hilariously awkward scene of him trying to ugly-cry while holding his dead partner proves that no one should cast him for his acting skills. Come on, if one were to cast him in anything, those clothes have to go. That’s just common sense!
On the bright side, this movie also keeps Mr Berenger mostly out of the fray, so I don’t have to try to force myself to believe that this old man can do martial arts and acrobats or something. Instead, he’s mostly a sniper sort and lets the much younger Tony do all the running and what not… until the last quarter or so when he and Tony are out to take down the bad guy and I am once again wondering why they couldn’t cast someone that, while old, can at least pull off his scenes without looking like great-grandpa is going to have a sneeze and then break a hip.
Having said that, the whole thing is fairly generic. It follows much of the unlikely buddy formula in an uninspired manner, not even trying to shake things up even a little to keep things interesting.
As far as B-list action schlock goes, this one has above average camera work, lighting, acting, and choreography—not amazing, but high tier for its genre. Also, the dialogues can be on the cheesy side, but they get me to chuckle now and then, so that’s good.
All in all, this is one action film that tries very hard to resemble every other generic B-grade action film out there. It’s watchable, but then again, I’m not sure why one should watch this over all those dozens and even hundreds of movies out there that have a similar plot and characters.
May as well just pick one of these films at random and press play, really, unless one is irrational and is bent on watching anything that has Cam Gigandet on it. Ahem.
