2014 saw the debut of the Chilean action flick Redeemer at the Fantastic Film Festival and since then, I have been eagerly awaiting an opportunity to feast my action hungry eyes upon this film. Why? Because it stars the martial arts beast Marko Zaror whose only job in film life is to kick ass and take names.
In Redeemer, Marko plays Pardo, an ex-hitman looking for redemption of his past sins by taking requests from innocent people who are preyed upon by criminals. What’s interesting is that he offers these criminals a chance to ask forgiveness, should they decline, he unleashes a storm of violent, and usually swift, justice on their asses. Shortly after fulfilling a request, Pardor aka The Redeeme’s path crosses with a wannabe drug lord Bradock and soon the Redeemer finds himself protecting two people while taking on all of Bradock’s people in addition to a man seeking vengeance for an act Pardor committed in the past.
Redeemer sees Zaror teaming up once again with director Ernesto Diaz Espinoza, the man who directed him in the nifty bounty hunter revenge flick Mandrill. According to IMDB ratings, I am clearly in the minority when it comes to which film I liked more but I felt Mandrill was a better film and more entertaining from an action perspective. This isn’t to say there weren’t parts of Redeemer that I loved. Zaror is an animal and some of the fight sequences were awesome, especially with occasionally sweet camerawork. Maybe my expectations for action were too high, but this felt too much like a B-movie than I was expecting.
Outside of the hilariously hammy acting, which was intentional with any scene involving the politically incorrect American Bradock, my biggest gripe with the film is that there are two fight scenes that actually look and feel choreographed. The first is a long one on one fight that takes place in the middle of the film and the last one is at the end between Pardo and the assassin seeking to ruin his life’s work. I’ve rarely ever witnessed something like this in an action film where I felt like I was watching something staged, something like a WWE match. The first battle in particular played out like a MMA fight with heavy grappling. You could see one guy or the other was showing restraint, feeling dazed when they were hit but then being picked up off the ground like in those WWE matches. It felt so rehearsed and unauthentic that it made me want to stop watching the film. The ending felt this way as well except not to the same extent.
Redeemer isn’t a film that’s going to reinvent the action genre nor is it one that’ll leave a lasting impression. Similar to Mandrill, it ends up being a small, mildly entertaining showcase for Marko Zaror to do his thing, namely beating the crap out of people. He was able to land a role in Machete Kills but I’m hoping Zaror finds himself in some more badass movies with elevated stories, cinematography and performances. He has the potentially to be a more recognizable action star like Tony Jaa and Iko Uwais, he just needs that real breakout film and, unfortunately, Redeemer isn’t it.
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