The Caretaker (2025)

The Caretaker (2025)- * * *

Directed by: Fady Jeanbart

Starring: Robert Bronzi, Quinton "Rampage" Jackson, Paul Logan, Neva Leoncini, Avaryana Rose, Mark Justice, Jacob "Madman Fulton" Southwick, Brett Benowitz, and Daniel Baldwin

"I know you're not much of a talker" - Hudson

On the far outskirts of Las Vegas, old ghost towns have become tourist attractions. Someone has to take care of them. Someone has to be a CARETAKER, if you will. In the case of one particular dusty ol' burg, that happens to be a mysterious man named Adam (Bronzi). We don't know much about him, but presumably his name is Adam Caretaker. He doesn't talk a lot but when he does, it is with a thick accent of unknown origin. Adam is depressed because he has lost his daughter Grace (Leoncini). Occasionally, his buddy Hudson (Jackson), a musclebound preacher, comes by to cheer him up and keep him company. Other than that, nothing much happens around these parts. 

That is, until a crime boss named Draco (Baldwin) enters the picture. His daughter Gina (Rose) has become stranded in Adam's "off-season" ghost town (can these places have an off-season when it's blazing sunlight year round?). So Draco does what any self-respecting crime boss does, he sends his favorite goons to leave L.A. and go and retrieve Gina. His "pack of cards" baddies include Joker (Justice), Ace (Southwick), Jack (Benowitz), and their leader, naturally, is King (Logan). Draco tells them not to fail in their mission because Draco is dying of a terminal illness and doesn't have much time left to live. But what are Draco's true motives? The stage is now set for an all-out showdown between The Caretaker, Gina, and Hudson, and Draco's goons. Who will take care of who?

We're huge Robert Bronzi fans, so we're always excited when a new Bronzi film is released. As the Death Kiss poster states, "Justice has a familiar face", and we're glad he exists and is continuing to make movies. As seems to be the norm these days, it took many, many production companies to come together to make The Caretaker. They must think that Bronzi is in his Jason Statham era, because just as Statham's film titles say what he is - A Working Man (2025), or The Beekeeper (2024), for example, so have Bronzi's recent films, The Gardener (2021) and The Caretaker, say what he is. The plots even follow a fairly similar structure to Statham's, but with far less budget. That's not necessarily a bad thing, just an observation. The Bronzi titles may be subtly hinting to potential viewers that they're in for a similar viewing experience, that they're on the same par as Statham's. Where everything comes together is that Statham was The Mechanic (2011), and so was Charles Bronson (1972). 

When we first meet The Caretaker, it seems he's just the caretaker of a bunch of rocks. We didn't know that was a job that someone could have, but maybe it is in Nevada. Then Adam has to deal with these annoying punk teens, and then we thought, "Poor The Caretaker. He has it rough". Then, of course, he has to deal with Draco's goons, and to the movie's credit, each of them has a fairly unique personality. The "deck of cards" gang has a certain resonance with Reservoir Dogs's color-coded guys. Joker is indeed always joking around and wears obviously color-clashing clothes. Ace is a hulking MMA brute with long dreadlocks, Jack is a sniper with a Dr. Who scarf, and of course the leader, King, is Paul Logan. He is the owner of the Prerequisite Strip Club - a must to have in modern-day DTV. Back in 2014, in our Ballistica (2009) review, we said - to quote ourselves - "Something tells me we haven't seen the last of Logan!" Okay, I just added the exclamation point for fun, but, twelve years later, we were proven correct. Sadly, he doesn't do any Ballistica, but we were happy he was here nonetheless. 

That's the thing about The Caretaker - they actually got some names: Bronzi, Jackson, Baldwin, and Logan. This shows that they care about us, the DTV fans. That sort of appreciation goes a long way. The plot is a classic action setup (if not an old-time Western setup), there is plenty of punching and shooting (we didn't much care for the CGI blood and muzzle flashes but we'd be willing to gently look the other way on that), and we also appreciated that they didn't bother with a huge backstory. There's no wasted time. Draco wants his daughter back. Goons go to get her. Bronzi fights the goons. End of movie. You gotta love that. 

But there is just enough plot and heart to stop this from being a completely mindless beat-up/shootfest: Gina closely resembles Adam's deceased and long-missed daughter. Perhaps he feels that if he saves her from the danger surrounding them, he can redeem himself from what he failed to do before: save his daughter. Maybe he can even have a relationship with her. In turn, Gina can see Adam as a true father figure that she never had. Not an amoral gangster who doesn't care about her, but a man with morals and integrity. Draco wants his daughter back just because he's used to getting what he wants. Adam may never get his true daughter back, but he can find a surrogate in Gina, perhaps. It involves alpha males with daughters in a battle for supremacy. 

But if that's too much to contemplate, you can just concentrate on mind-numbingly stupid punch-ups such as the one between Hudson and Ace. In just one scene, at the strip club, there is this one guy wearing a black turtleneck who resembles Bronson Pinchot/Balki. He stood out in the scene because it was just so funny and weird. 

All in all, there's a lot to like about The Caretaker. You have to already be a fan of these sorts of movies; it's not going to win you over if you're not. But we are, obviously, and you must be too if you're reading this. So, long live Bronzi and may he continue to make DTV action films for years to come!

Comeuppance Review by: Brett and Ty

Prepare To Die (2024)

 

Prepare To Die (2024)- * * *

Dirtected by: Jose Montesinos

Starring: Ryan Padilla, Craig Ng, Zhan Wang, Brylee Hsu, Andrew Pinon, Quinton "Rampage" Jackson, Paula Rae Taylor, Rylan Williams, Michael Madsen, and Lorenzo Lamas

When Diego Padilla (Ryan Padilla) was just a young tot, the diabolical "Ruler of the Town" - you know the type - Blaine Richtefield (Lamas) one day just showed up on his family's land. Richtefield claimed he needed it so he could create a "beef farm". Said beef farm was so important to Richtefield to farm beef, he killed Padilla's parents. The goons were about to kill Diego as well, but with the help of Richtefield's sympathetic driver Silas (Wang), he escaped. Silas, being Chinese and all, sent Diego to live with his relatives in China. He figured it's going to take that amount of distance to keep him safe from the clutches of Richtefield. While in China, Diego trains in Martial Arts for ten years with Bingwen (Ng) and Xin Yi (Hsu), Silas's kin.




However, after those ten years, Diego figures that's enough time to then return to the States (or is it Mexico?) to get his revenge on Richtefield. Along the way he assembles a team of other people who also have been wronged by Richtefield: William Freeman (Williams), Blanca (Taylor), and James Swiftwater (Pinon). Each has their own skill set, i.e., Blanca is good with knives, Swiftwater has six-shooters, etc. Even though Richtefield has expanded his evil empire to include drugs and prostitution, and has a pimp/sidekick named Ryan Fruitwood (Jackson), Sheriff Hansen (Madsen) just looks the other way. Will our heroes finally take down the nefarious Blaine Richtefield? PREPARE to watch Tubi today!




Ryan Fruitwood. James Swiftwater. Blaine Richtefield. They're ALL HERE! Thanks to the genius character naming by writers Jose Montesinos (also the director) and Jacob David Smith, Prepare to Die consistenly holds the viewers' interest, because people in the movie are always saying these colorful names.




That being said, Prepare to Die is a fairly loving throwback to the 80's/90's-style "assemble a team and beat the bad guy"-type of action film. It doesn't offer anything particularly new to the mix - unless you count go-for-broke character names - but, then again, if you were seeking shocking and startling cinematic originality, you wouldn't be watching Prepare to Die in the first place. The fact that fan favorites Lorenzo Lamas and Michael Madsen are here - together for the first time - is reason enough to watch the film. Lamas plays the dastardly Richtefield (they say that name A LOT in the movie, so get ready for that) with what you might call "awkward aplomb" - he seems at ease, but not really. It's hard to explain. You just have to watch PTD to see what we mean. He looks like a cross between Richard Moll and Neal McDonough in the film. When he and his goons originally killed Diego's parents, he had gray hair. How, after ten years, did Diego know Richtefield wouldn't just die of natural causes? I guess it's just a chance he had to take.




As for our old buddy Mike Madsen...well, let's just say that it's a good thing that Tubi offers subtitles on all its films. It may not be one of his more coherent or "caring" performances, but it doesn't matter. Madsen is always entertaining to watch and this is no exception. Rampage doesn't do a heck of a lot here - his role is slightly bigger than in Acceleration (2019), but not by much. Our main hero, Ryan Padilla as Diego Padilla, is like an angrier Justin Long.




Curiously, there's a lot of unnecessarily repetitive dialogue throughout the film. For example, Diego at one point mentions "money I saved from working" - as if there was another income source he wanted to make sure the audience wasn't considering. Or, at a scene where the Freeman character is playing pool, he says something like, "No one can beat me at pool". We as the audience can see you're playing pool. The second half of that sentence is not needed.




There are other examples of repetition as well - there are multiple scenes of people saying they're afraid to go up against Richtefield, then eventually agreeing to. If the film had less repetition, and instead maybe a few more beat-em-up/shooting scenes, we might have a bit more of a winner on our hands. Repetition is especially noticeable in a made-for-Tubi movie, because we have to sit through six commercials for Mint Mobile just to get to the next scene. So to cover ground we've already covered seems even more superfluous than usual.




However, the filmmakers clearly "get it" - they wanted to make an old-school actioner and they did. We give all due credit and kudos to them for that. We can look past some of the silly-looking CGI (there's not much of it), because it's 2024 and apparently that's the way it is now. We don't have much choice, apparently. So, for the Madsen & Lamas factor, and to get a look behind the curtain of evil beef farms, Prepare to Die is worth a watch.

Comeuppance Review by: Brett and Ty

Death Warrior (2009)

Death Warrior (2009)-* *

Directed by: Bill Corcoran

Starring: Hector Echavarria, Tanya Clarke, Keith Jardine, Quinton "Rampage" Jackson, Georges St. Pierre, Rashad Evans, and Nick Mancuso












Reinero, aka Ray (Echavarria) is a professional Punchfighter on the big-time Punchfighting circuit. His biggest rival is Wolf Jackson (Jackson). Fight promoters have been touting their upcoming battle, but Ray's wife Kira (Clarke) begs him not to do it. Ray, blithely unaware of any past cliches, says the classic line "just one more fight". Before the match can take place, gangster and self-described "businessman" Ivan Mikhailov (Mancuso) kidnaps Ray and injects Kira with a poison that will kill her in five days. Ivan forces Ray to Punchfight for his life against other meatheads while people bet on this activity over the internet on the website gladiatorchallenge.com. Will everybody love Ray? And can he extricate himself from this dire situation?

Echavarria is hilariously wooden, and he wears the same jacket with a yellow stripe for just about the whole movie. He does a lot of flying kicks. He's somewhat likable, but let's just say his fighting nickname of the "Rain Man" is disturbingly accurate. The rest of the cast is rounded out by monosyllabic meatheads with zero acting ability. Except, of course, for Nick Mancuso, who puts in an awesome performance. His over the top, bug-eyed yelling must be seen. He screams and spits all his lines. His energy is welcome, and his performance, which he easily could have phoned in but for some reason chose not to, saves the movie.

As always, this modern-day Punchfighter is TRYING, but there's too much nu-metal and ADD editing. Unlike Beatdown (2010), you can almost see the fights here for five seconds at a time. How far the fighting genre has fallen. Funny fighter names include Rexx, El Croco, The Shaman, and Kang Lai, who is a "Ninja Master" and, of course, "The Best". The following is a list of quotes from the movie:

"Death matches have been going on since the Coliseum. You were born for it."
"He has yet to taste defeat."
"No man has lived until you stare death in the face."
"When you're in a fight, you always get hit."
"I'm going to SLAY YOU!"
"I will rip your heart apart" ...and the all-time, laugh-out-loud classic:

"Someone's trying to infiltrate the MMA!"

THE MMA? Anyway, on top of all that, the film tries to capitalize on the Saw-like "torture porn" trend. For example, the fighters have to fight while in chains. Call it: "Chain-Fighting". But, inadvertently (?) quoting Wayne Newton from Best of The Best 2 (1990), Ivan yells, "The only rule is...THERE ARE NO RULES!!!!"

Despite its shot-on-video look, Death Warrior provides a few laughs and Nick Mancuso at his best.

Comeuppance Review by: Ty

Never Surrender (2009)

Never Surrender (2009)- * *1\2

Directed by: Hector Echavarria

Starring: Hector Echavarria, Patrick Kilpatrick, Silvia Koys, BJ Penn, Quinton "Rampage" Jackson, Georges St. Pierre, Heath Herring, and James Russo




"I found something worth fighting for."








Diego Carter (Echavarria) is a world-famous MMA fighter who is enticed by a mannish woman named Sandra (Koys) to join an underground Punchfighting circuit. It is run by the ruthless Seifer (Kilpatrick) - ruthless in the sense that what he's really running is a prostitution ring. He calls them "consorts", and if you win a match, you get a consort, or your opponent's consort, or something like that. It's all just a tawdry excuse to have Skinemax-style softcore porn scenes with plenty of unwanted, un-asked for Hector Echavarria nudity. Ew. All this nonsense leads up to "The Tournament", presumably the ultimate battle for the ultimate consort. Also, Carter falls in love with Sandra. What's REALLY going on?

This movie is like a 90-minute training video for Hector Echavarria. Somehow he was allowed to direct this thing, and it has all the inept editing and strange cuts you might expect. You never see blows connect because there's an unnecessary cut right before the blow lands.Undue emphasis is put on the fact that he uses the late night-advertised product the Perfect Pushup in his training rituals. Echavarria invited all his fighter buddies to be in the movie, whether they belong there or not, and they even go by some of their real names.

In the beginning of the film, two burly men in shorts are grappling, grunting and sweating while a song with the lyrics "45 minutes of Loooove" plays. Then they grab each other's legs for the takedown. Wags who would decry these movies as homoerotic...may have a point here.

Also it should be noted that Diego's "...punches carry the dream of a small child who grew up off the coast of La Plata."

Naturally, The Tournament has "no rules and no referees", and Seifer notes, "is tax free". Is this a comment on today's political landscape? I know I go to modern-day Punchfighters for top-shelf punditry.

Patrick Kilpatrick looks like Howie Mandel now, and screams and yells just like Nick Mancuso in Death Warrior. However, this movie makes Death Warrior look like a masterpiece. James Russo is barely in it, which was a disappointment.On the bright side, Crusher's involved.

Overall, this movie is beyond dumb. Its structure resembles a brainless video game, but with more grunting.

Comeuppance Review by: Ty