Notable Cast: Dolph Lundgren, Christina Villa, Kelsey
Grammer, Michael Pare, Roger Cross, Aaron McPherson, Rocko Reyes, James Pulido,
Jose Trujillo
Dolph Lundgren made his directorial comeback with the highly
entertaining Castle Falls back in 2021, and for an action fan like me,
it was a welcome comeback. I’ve always been that one guy who defended Dolph’s
directorial efforts, and now that he’s back behind the camera, I’m there. With
his latest action thriller venture, Wanted Man, Lundgren is trying to
balance classic action tropes and a slightly more modern (and, dare I say,
socio-politically charged?) narrative. The result is an entertaining mixture of
gun blasts, small-scale thrills, and a surprisingly compelling character arc
for an older man trying to be better.
After a relatively cliche opening, something found regularly
in lower-budget action thrillers, where a drug deal goes south and leaves some
DEA agents iced in the morgue, Wanted Man immediately goes into crafting
the lead character that the audience will be partnering with for the run of the
movie. Dolph, naturally, plays an aging Detective in Texas who, we quickly
learn, has been revealed as a racist cop for viciously beating a Mexican suspect
on camera.
Quite frankly, this opening act is surprisingly politically charged. Even the
visuals provided by co-writer, director, and star Dolph aren’t hesitating to
throw in some charged imagery, including showing the character, Detective Johansen,
in the act of beating the suspect. Although the film certainly tries to thread
the needle in not necessarily presenting the lead character in a wholly
negative light (courtesy of a Police Chief who keeps up the entire “you’re not
a bad guy” excuses), the film isn’t afraid to portray him as a raging asshole.
It’s exemplified when he meets his cop buddies, featuring both Kelsey Grammer
and Michael Pare, at a strip club and finds his problematic opinions of Mexican
people magnified by his friends.
A part of me was really nervous about where Wanted Man
was going at this point, but Dolph - as a co-writer, director, and producer of
this film, knows what he was doing, and he wanted this film to carry some
darkness and weight to it. From this point on, Detective Johansen is sent to
Mexico as part of his PR rehabilitation to escort a couple of witnesses to the
DEA murders from the opening. After a brutal attack on the police escort,
Johansen is left wounded with Rosa, played with a massive amount of empathy by
Christina Villa, and wanted for the murders of the police officers by their
assailants.
The latter half of Wanted Man continues to follow the
straight-to-VOD blueprint for action thrillers where Johansen, played heavily
into all of its layers by Dolph, relies on the people he was so viciously
racist towards to heal up, clear his name, and uncover who wanted Rosa dead so
badly. While the film features some pops of effectively shot and viciously
violent small-scale gun battles - including a fantastic little home invasion
set piece that demonstrates that Dolph knows how to show the power of a
shotgun, its focus is not on the action. It’s on Johansen’s character growth in
learning to empathize with the people he blatantly discriminated against. Dolph
smartly builds relationships and drama throughout the second act to drive home
its messages and character growth. The secondary characters might not be the
focus, but they embolden the relationship between Johansen and Rosa in a way
that makes the film feel so much more fulfilling than the usual low-budget
actioner.
Even though Wanted Man’s eventual reveal of the
film's true villains isn’t shocking, particularly when it becomes apparent
where the narrative is going overall, the film ends up feeling overly
satisfying. It’s not often that a movie of this size has such a character-driven
narrative, but here we are and Wanted Man delivers the goods in
surprising ways. It’s the little film that could, taking its action thriller
blueprint and embedding some thoughtful narrative beats and thematic punches
that burst like gunfire. It’s well-directed, acted, and developed by Dolph, and
if he keeps directing films like Wanted Man, I’ll be lined up for the
next dozen.
Félicitation de retour au cinéma Dolph Lundgren
ReplyDeleteA star is born! Christina Villa was so good! Hoping for a sequel. We need to see what happened to her family. Plus I doubt the cartel will give up so easily. They're bound to be pissed to realize they were robbed by American cops.
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