Zero Tolerance (1994)

Zero Tolerance (1994)-* * * *

Directed by: Joseph Merhi

Starring: Robert Patrick, Titus Welliver, Mick Fleetwood, Jeffery Anderson-Gunther, and Miles O'Keefe

PM knows action, and by this point in their history they had refined their craft to such a point that they  turned it into an art. Case in point: Zero Tolerance. This movie is awesome. It delivers the goods in every possible way.

Jeff Douglas (Patrick) is a by-the-book FBI agent and family man. On what he thinks will be just a routine assignment, he must go down to Mexico and pick up Manta (Welliver), an evil, but charismatic killer and drug dealer. He is a member of the White Hand, a sinister underworld organization intent on putting a new form of liquid heroin on the streets. Things don’t go exactly as planned, and Manta escapes. Now back with his criminal associates Vitch (Fleetwood), Kowalski (O’Keeffe), LaFleur (Anderson-Gunter), and others, he commits an act that is so horrendous against Jeff Douglas, Jeff must go rogue and systematically kill all the baddies. His FBI counterparts don’t approve of his reckless ways, but Jeff doesn’t care. He’s traveling around the country on a no-holds-barred revenge mission, and for the people that wronged him, he has ZERO TOLERANCE.

Robert Patrick as the hero, Jeff Douglas, was an excellent choice. Zero Tolerance has way more emotion than a normal film of this type, and Patrick is just the man to carry it off. That’s something that makes this movie special. You can see Douglas slowly losing patience with life, and being stripped of everything he has. With his emotions flooding, we see he has nothing left to lose, and he takes out his grief and pain, as well as anger, on his aggressors. Another interesting casting choice was Mick Fleetwood as one of the top bad guys. It seems the filmmakers wanted to go with Donald Pleasance, but seeing as how the drummer for Fleetwood Mac is evil in real life, the casting decision was a no-brainer. O’Keeffe puts in one of his best roles also, as the conflicted baddie with the Matt Hannon-like hair.

Titus Welliver is also noteworthy as the sinister, purple suited Manta. He’s actually not the only one in the movie that wears a purple suit. He even has a multi-screen videoconferencing system with his fellow evildoers which can only be described as GoToDrugDeal (patent pending). This was way before Skype and a lot of other technology. As we discussed in the Bloodmoon (1997) review, direct to video action movies oftentimes are ahead of the curve technology-wise, but no one gives them credit because no one ever talks about them.

But the bottom line is, this is a mega-entertaining, fast-paced gem that delivers the goods times ten. It’s the best kind of revenge movie. It has a well-written plot, a likable hero, a hate-able villain, and action and stunts galore, but it actually has underpinnings of emotion and depth. What more could you want?

Zero Tolerance gets our most enthusiastic recommendation. See it today!

Comeuppance Review by: Brett and Ty