5.25.2015

Recoil (1998)

PLOT: After a bank robbery, cops kill one of the robbers. The robber turns out to be the son of a gangster. This makes his daddy awful unhappy and so he decides to kill all the cops involved. What he wasn't counting on, though, was that two of them would accidentally not get killed. These two men would set out to accidentally not get killed as long as possible. In the meantime, there is a not a single car or helicopter in the city that won't blow up.

Director: Art Camacho
Writer: Art Camacho, Gary Preston Jr.
Cast: Gary Daniels, Gregory McKinney, Thomas Kopache


PLOT THICKENER
I think this may very well be the best PM Entertainment film the company ever produced. At the very least, it is in the top five. This is one of the best films of its type that you'll ever see. Okay? Good. We're done here.

If you really must know more, you should know that this film works so well, I believe, for three reasons. First, it is directed by the great Art Camacho. Sure, a glance at Camacho's directorial efforts shows us that he is responsible for such fare as Little Bigfoot and Magic Kid. However, Camacho in the director's seat is great news because of the second point: action director Spiro Razatos.


Spiro Razatos as action director with stuntman Art Camacho in the director's chair means that the stunts and action sequences in this film are stellar. Really incredible stuff. There are a handful of really big scenes that must have been incredibly difficult to pull off. This is a film that knows what its audience wants and it does that thing better than just about anyone could, which brings me to the third point: Recoil is a very formulaic film.

That might sound contradictory. However, all PM Entertainment films are essentially formulaic. What sets Recoil apart is that it sticks to the formula for the entire running time. There is an opening bank robbery/car chase scene that lasts for about a third of the runtime. After that, we learn the very bare essentials about who the characters are and then there's another action set piece. The entire film is like that. It never strays from this formula and it never stops throwing cars and helicopters at you and blowing them to smithereens.


Probably the sole criticism of the film is that Gary Daniels does not get much of an opportunity to flex his martial arts skills until the final third but, when he does, it is very well choreographed and shot because, again, this is an Art Camacho film and he understands such things. Daniels very capably handles the action but, truly, the stars of this film are Spiro Razatos and Art Camacho.

VERDICT
If someone were to ask me why I watch these DTV action flicks, Recoil is one of the films I would show them. It gets almost everything right and almost nothing wrong and it is a window to a time in cinematic history that, sadly, just does not exist anymore. It sticks to the wild action set pieces and stunts that are the reason we watch these movies and it doesn't do anything else at all. Thank God.
-- Review by Craig McNeely

AVAILABILITY
Netflix, Amazon, YouTube.

7 / 7

3 comments:

  1. This is truly one of Gary Daniels' best actioners,for I recently got the DVD of this one and I'm very proud to have done so.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I just watched this and holy shit, this was fantastic! Just discovered the site and am making my way through it. Great stuff!

    ReplyDelete
  3. its a good movie with great actionstyle (one of the last) but i prefer the 87-96 era when it comes to my b action movies

    ReplyDelete

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