Fire with Fire (II) (2012)
5/10
I've seen worse films with big stars in straight-to-video actioners. Formulaic and predictable, but watchable.
20 November 2012
Similar recent action flicks with decent actors that were worse:The River Murders(3/10), Set-up(3/10), Takers(4.5/10), and Elephant White(4/10).

Donofrio is actually really solid as the villain here.

The story is very straight forward, but the brutality of some of the violence is quite nice. They really earned the "R" rating here, and that's always a nice thing when it comes to films like this. After all, there's nothing worse than the clean PG-13 version of these types of films.

I thought some of the power struggles between the villain and the cops came off pretty well. We get the sense that the villain here is practically untouchable, and that aspect of the film has a realistic edge.

The films has it's issues though. The lead character is poorly developed and a budding romance is glossed over like a 2 minute cliff-note.

This is borderline 5-6 for me, but I'm sticking with 53/100! That doesn't round up to 6; 6 really would be generous.

I was blown away by how many big supporting faces were in this film. Somebody dished out quite a lot of money on this cast. Too bad the script squanders the cast with suspect writing and a mail-list of decent actors that have one line in the film.

I actually felt like I got my money's worth here, but I only spent .50 for the 3rd choice out of the redbox.

Considering the excellent cast - it's a bit of a disappointment. BUT, considering the straight-to-video action write-off nature of the release - it wasn't half-bad. It was only 44% bad:)

You might like this if you liked:Death Sentence(about even, I thought Death Sentence was severely over-rated, 5/10), Set-Up(much worse), Elephant White(worse), Law Abiding Citizen(about even)or The Last Lullaby(better).
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