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★★★★
This is an outstanding crime action thriller. Johnny Strong is convincing in the lead role of Sean Riley, a New Orleans cop who is assigned a grisly homicide case with a young Detective, Will Ganz (Kevin Phillips). Riley discovers that his old friend Colin (Sean Patrick Flanery) is involved in some way and has to figure out what his friend has gotten himself into whilst trying to solve the case.
The characters themselves tick quite a lot of boxes of what you would expect from a cop action thriller but there is more to them than these familiar archetypes. William Kaufman doesn’t create a set of characters in his screenplay, he manages to create people who we can believe that they could exist. There are a few nice cameos from some well known actors of the past, Tom Berenger and Jurgen Prochnow stand out above all others. The film doesn’t let up on the brutality, nor does it shy away from it. At it’s core the film is a throwback to the crime films of the 70s and 80s, taking inspiration from the buddy cop genre with some of it’s scenes. And yet the story is a very contemporary piece.
The action sequences are fantastic and with the exception of some of the blood hits there seems to be no CGI involved in their construction. When a car crashes, it really crashes which is a nice change. The scenery is fresh and different, mainly due to its New Orleans setting.
It’s incredible to believe that this was an independent production because it has all the hallmarks and production value of a big budget action movie. William Kaufman seems to have put every cent they spent on the screen and he does so with a style that is very reminiscent of the Dirty Harry series mixed with Lethal Weapon.