Review
I Am Vengeance (Action) (2018)
Director: Ross Boyask
Writers: Ross Boyask
Stars: Stu Bennett, Anna Shaffer, Fleur Keith, Gary Daniels
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John Gold (Stu Bennett) is a well-trained special operative that discovers that an ex-army friend of his has been murdered alongside his parents. With this information, John Gold sets out to find those responsible and make them pay for it; John Gold is vengeance incarnate.
After the murders are seen by the audience in the intro sequence to; I Am Vengeance. We get our first glimpse of Bennett’s character moving through some factory building, kicking ass along the way while donning a golden mask used a temporary cover for his identity to the audience. Following the action-filled intro scene, Gold finds out what happened to his friend and goes on the path of revenge. It starts by Gold going to the pub clearly stating his intentions in the town and the people there quickly grow weary but are promptly fully informed about his intentions, shaking the beehive as Gold intended. He gets ambushed outside the pub, and thus a path of revenge, drugs and action kicks off.
There’s not much subtility throughout the film, it’s simple, rough and certainly not very pretty. Bennett, who plays the character of John Gold, gets an overly-showy unveiling, a surly badass who isn’t too much about feelings and more about actions. Grimy UK action is what you’ll be getting, a sub-genre that is never subtle or very broad in story-telling and most often about vengeance, hardship or something along those lines. I Am Vengeance plays into this basic idea a little too much. Apart from the action, it doesn’t have a great story; it’s merely a thread to follow from start to end. None of this I mind, but when aspects like the action aren’t too good or interesting either there’s nothing else left to help the film along. Mostly the acting feels choppy and the lead feeling over-simplified and bland. Some things can be looked over, but everything just adds up, stale acting, sub-par effects and sound design that really isn’t any good with cheap sounding effects, camerawork with too much zooming in, and often ending up in weird angles.
As a professional wrestling enthusiast it personally feels great to see former wrestlers or even current wrestlers appear in any movie, I heard in interviews after Bennet’s departure from WWE that he intended to dip his toes into the film industry following in the footsteps of others like of Dwayne ‘’The Rock’’ Johnson, Dave ‘’Batista’’ Bautista and John Cena. Not everyone sees this as a logical decision; they are two entirely different industries. However, there is still a connection there especially with WWE’s focus on entertainment and promo’s, even someone like The Rock has been in bad films, and there’s no shame in it. In Bennett’s case, He chose to enter an entirely different movie scene, featuring in more low budget grimy UK action. And he has the perfect physique for it, muscular and towering over most people, being around 2 metres tall.
Besides the unimaginative story and the heavily typecast Bennett as John Gold, there just aren’t a lot of positives here. I feel like Bennett still has the room to grow and will do so to improve his acting abilities in other films.
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Verdict
I Am Disappointed.
3.2
