You Owe. You Pay.
Starring: Nick Principe, Robin Sydney, Todd Farmer, James Duval
Director: Ravi Dhar
2014 | 77 Minutes | Not Rated
“Hey man, you’ve got some blood on your shirt.” – Tommy Two-Tone
“It’s not my blood.” – John Falcon
I kind of knew that going into American Muscle, it wouldn’t be my cup of tea. I’ve grown pretty tired of the grindhouse genre. If American Muscle couldn’t deliver something pretty special, it wasn’t likely to get a second thought from me.
John Falcon (Nick Principe) has been in prison for 10 long years. Now he’s out and looking for revenge on those responsible for putting him there.
American Muscle is definitely Grindhouse inspired. All of the genre tropes are here – boobs, blood, basic storyline, bad words, bad acting and growly voices (I couldn’t think of a B-word for that last one).
It takes little more than 10 minutes to figure out that you aren’t going to get much of a reason to cheer for the main character. He has a reason for seeking vengeance against his brother and his gang but he’s far from a good guy. And the reasoning for his revenge mission is revealed over the course of the whole movie so you are just basically following a murderous psychopath for the majority of the movie.
The action is decent enough. There’s plenty of blood and violence. There’s a few good fist fights and a few more gun battles but… man… it just feels pointless.
Call me old fashioned but I like some redeemable qualities in my protagonists. American Muscle doesn’t have a single worthwhile protagonist, just a bunch of scum bags, criminals and drug addicts. American Muscle serves little purpose other than to provide some boobs and blood for the viewer and, quite frankly, there’s better places to get both. For a movie that clocks in at 77 minutes this sure did feel like a long ride.
Action Movie Fanatix 