Hunt to Kill (2010)

Starring Steve Austin, Gary Daniels and Eric Roberts, the main villains in "The Expendables", here's another action flick for you. Except that it's a story you've probably seen before, or at least have seen enough elements of it.

Who hasn't seen a cop or gun-toting man have his daughter kidnapped and then he is forced to either help the villains or kill them all? I mean, really... the least you could do is substitute a son.

The best part of this film is towards the beginning after the heist. The interaction between the criminals is pretty awesome. Once Steve Austin shows up, it's kind of downhill. Not his fault, mind you -- Austin was terrific in his past work and is pretty decent here. The story just gets old quickly.

Fmovies: Looks like I am 0-for-2 when it comes to DTV action flicks with "kill" in the title this month with this and Dolph Lundgren's disappointing THE KILLING MACHINE. Some genius producer corralled the villains (Steve Austin, Eric Roberts and Gary Daniels) from Stallone's THE EXPENDABLES and put them in a cheap-o film. Jim Rhodes (Austin) is a border patrol agent who is forced (via the hostage daughter routine) to lead a gang on an excursion near the Canadian border. The gang is led by Banks (Gil Bellows, looking rough) and they are trying to find the guy who double crossed them after a heist. After they get their haul, they leave Rhodes for dead but he uses his Rambo-esquire survival skills to get them. Zzzzzzzz. This is the first "Stone Cold" Steve Austin film I've seen and he is surprisingly personality deprived (surprising because of his popular wrestling persona). The film's highlight is a fight between Austin and Daniels, which ends with Daniels run through with a stick and Austin saying, "Sorry you couldn't stick around." Really...in 2010. Director Keoni Waxman did several of those awful DTV Steven Seagal flicks and offers nothing outside of the film being in focus and some good forest locations. It is one of those movies where bad guys uncover a bomb in a huge warehouse and everyone stands 2 feet from it while one guy defuses it instead of getting the hell away. Eric Roberts is the doomed partner is the prologue and is gone by the seven minute mark. Skip it...and that's the bottom line cuz "Stone Lukewarm" Udar55 said so!

Verily I say unto thee....HUNT TO KILL is one helluva movie and is a welcome addition to what we must hope will be a glut of new DTV action movies thanks to the worldwide success of that glorious hymn to masculine values THE EXPENDABLES.

In fact HUNT TO KILL boasts three alumni from the cast of THE EXPENDABLES and they are star Stve Austin,British kick-boxing legend Gary Daniels and Eric Roberts in an early cameo. Austin plays a forest dwelling Border patrol officer who is cajoled into guiding a quartet of jewel thieves through the woods in order to catch up with the guy who stole their jewels in the aftermath of a heist.Austin has little choice as his attractive teenage daughter is also brought along as a hostage.

Watching tough as hell Austin turn the tables on his captors makes for a fantastic 90 + minutes of well handled in your face action with none of the many fights and stunts spoilt by the dreaded "shakycam" which has ruined so many recent action films including the last disgracefully poor Bond movie.This is action cinema as it should be filmed and the brutal fight between Austin and Daniels will rate highly with fans of kick-butt mano-a-mano slugfests like me.Every punch and kick is clearly delineated and edited to maximum effect.

HUNT TO KILL is glorious stuff for any male out there who is not ashamed of having cojones and gets a 10 rating from the Bapster who is leaping with joy at the way the career Gary Daniels is gaining in exposure now that he is older and getting some great bad guy roles that he performs with aplomb and Austin commands the screen as ever.Great stuff.

Hunt to Kill fmovies. A real stinker, albeit not without one or two gratuitous moments of untimely satisfaction. We open up with a scene, where Jim Rhodes (Steve Austin) from the Mexican border patrol police, just days before moving up North to the Canadian side, loses his partner Lee Davis (Eric Roberts) in a bust gone awry. Normally such an event is introduced to have some significant influence on future events, but in "Hunt to Kill" the death of Lee seems to be utterly inconsequential.

No matter. Jump forward several years and Jim Rhodes is hiking it out on the Canadian border, a bona fide Rambo with a badge. After the best part of the movie: the opening credits, we suddenly get thrown into a money heist led by Banks (Gil Bellows), who has an odd case of on-and-off insanity. After being made over by one their own Lawson (Michael Hogan) they follow him up North to track him down in the wilderness. There they kill a random sheriff and then take Jim and his daughter hostage to initiate a chain of events, which gets multiple people killed for no good reason.

Where to start? Characters are all over the place, lacking any sense of coherence to there actions. Save for one or two of the supporting cast motivations, personal traits and situational reactions are incoherent and change from scene to scene. Much has to do with the fact, that no plausible story is really created, hence situations are created at random to forward the story. From incredulous scene to abysmally moronic scene we wander with the plot into the US-Canadian forest areas, where Steve Austin ultimately goes postal.

Jim Rhodes himself, however likable he may be, fails to ignite a strong lead, instead falls flat due to lack of proper exposure to his actions and reactions. One of special note is the ruthless skewing of two of the kidnappers, despite the fact that their only true crime was following around the mental Banks. Yes, they stole money, but you got the feeling that the punishment far outdid the actual crime and you honestly start thinking that Rhodes should be imprisoned for his wanton vigilantism.

On the plus side the movie gives a good dosage of laughs thanks to some sixty-feet watch-rope (watch it to believe it), goodies like composite bows hanging randomly on a tree, appallingly hilarious one-liners and an end scene to die laughing for (when finally Rhodes declares that he hunts to kill!). The longer the movie goes the funnier it gets and I for one can say that those kinds of movies can be really entertaining. An additional bonus are some exquisite location shots of the foresty highlands areas.

This was a brilliant effort by all involved. The story is pretty basic - robbers need local patrol man to help them find there loot - but what helps hunt to kill is the performances. The performances by Austin, bellows ET AL are good and the direction by Keoni Waxman is brilliant (helped by the superior production values that were lacking in Damage and The Stranger). For a DTV this is definitely at the high end of that market and would not look out of place for a cinematic release.

The fight scenes and action set pieces are well choreographed and executed and the team behind this must be congratulated on there efforts. The hope is now Austin discovers his place in films and gets the right scripts - as this film definitely plays to his strengths.

Right, we need to be honest about some things to begin with. First, this is going to have a lot of people giving it the next title of "WORST FILM EVARRRRR" and while they are all wrong, they are people too!

No, but seriously. When you come into a film called 'hunt to kill' with Steve Austin as the main character, I highly doubt you're going in expecting a film with some Al Pacino style acting, the action equivalent script of The Shawshank Redemption and the cinematography of Lord of the Rings. I suppose my point is that this film isn't that bad, nor is it that great. It's a decent film. The acting on most parts is competent. It's not perfectly shot but I've seen so much worse.

I'm not going to go into the story, it's a basic run of the mill good guy/good guy's family gets caught in the wrong place at the wrong time, stuff happens.

On one note, I hated the character played by "Marie Avgeropoulos". I always have hated know-it-all teens who think they know everything and just cause more trouble.

It's worth a watch either way.