ARMY OF ONE (2020)

ARMY OF ONE (2020)

Tagline: They left her for dead. Big mistake.

(Action, Crime, Let’s Get Out of This Weird Town) [R]

Note: This movie was never given an MPAA rating, but it definitely would have been a [R].

So back when 2020 rolled around if you were alive everything pretty much sucked unless you lived in a town like Lake Havasu or Prescott where people hardly noticed the pandemic aside from a few masks here and there. Most of us were locked down and whatever substitute you got for “real life” was some crappy knockoff of the real thing. The impact on entertainment was pretty intense and just as a heads up before I get into this review. I watch at least 100 new movies from each year these days. In 2022 I saw 105 new movies from that year, I will crush that number this year. In 2020 however not so much. Even going back to find stuff I missed, I have only seen 34 movies from 2020. This thing lands at number 30 if that tells you where this review is headed.

In this one, we are introduced to Brenner and Dillon Baker who are just wanting to hike in some rural town, but end up getting nosey. They stumble upon a backwoods cartel family’s arsenal and nearly immediately Dillon is killed and his wife who is an army ranger is left for dead. After recovering Brenner takes her revenge on the cartel, but there is more going on than she realizes and it soon becomes clear that her actions could free others from the cartel’s grip. 

I think I was hoping for something more lighthearted from this. Not that I wasn’t expecting Brenner to just kill all the bad guys, but I wasn’t expecting a story of sex trading and everyone and their brother being totally sadistic. It was pretty much a downer for this entire ride and every glimmer of hope is met by depraved actions on someone’s part that just ruin all that. I am not going to say the ending wasn’t at least somewhat satisfying, but the road there was so loaded with misery it made the journey so torturous that it became excruciating to watch. 

Acting wise Ellen Hollman (LOVE AND MONSTERS) as Brenner is actually pretty great, but that doesn’t fix the bad dialog and lifeless plot. It’s hard to be inspiring when nearly everything you do ends up in something horrifying happening. Not saying it’s not possible, but it’s like putting forth a film with one arm tied behind your back and trying to juggle darkness and hope, and hope just hit the dirt. Matt Passmore (Last Man Standing) is fine as Dillon but doesn’t get enough screen time to really make his presence known. He also participates in a series of stupid decisions that make his character hard to sympathize with. Geraldine Singer (GET OUT) is sufficiently creepy as Mama in this. I think they got their money with her delivering a horrible person you couldn’t wait to see get what they had coming. Kendra Carelli (GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY VOL. 2) I thought did a good job in this as well as Emily. Honestly, the cast here was fine, it was just the script that was the major issue.

On top of the poor writing, the action sequences are few and far between and when they do arrive they seem pretty ridiculous. I wouldn’t mind really small women beating the crap out of dudes the size of pro wrestlers if they had done it in an over-the-top fun way or even a credible way like PREY does, but this is just really sloppy all around. It’s pretty rare for me to agree with nearly every review I have read, but to be honest of the recent reviews I’ve done, this was one of the ones I was least interested in writing. There are a few films that Uncork’d Entertainment distributes that I think are fine, but this thing is not one of them. 

I give ARMY OF ONE as 2 out of 7. 

GRAPHICS ARE THE PROPERTY OF 2ND NATURE FILMS AND ARE USED FOR REVIEW PURPOSES ONLY.