Mandrill

Mandrill (2009)

Runtime: 90 minutes

Directed by: Ernesto Diaz Espinoza

Starring: Marko Zaror, Celine Reymond, Alejandro Castillo, Luis Alarcon

From: I am not going to try to list the dozen or more companies (!) that were listed in the opening credits

This is a film from Chile I saw for a few reasons, including it expiring on Instant in a few days. If only it wasn't so average... it has a wacky endorsement of Schick Razors but this definitely isn't as good as the 70's funk band known as Mandrill. The Letterboxd review is below and I'll return tomorrow night.

While I am not officially participating in the month-long reviewing of foreign films, I figured I should still meet one of the demands that those officially doing it had to fulfill, which is that one of the movies had to be from Chile. I realize this isn't a high brow movie from there, but I have seen some films from star Marko Zaror (I haven't reviewed them all here; the reason why his only high profile role is the wildly uneven Machete Kills is that I understand Zaror prefers doing his own projects, which do have trouble getting off the ground) and a few days from now it will expire from Netflix Instant, so this was the perfect time to see it.

Turns out, this movie is totally average in every way. Just listen to the plot description: A hitman gets revenge on the villain who killed his parents when he was a kid. Why this didn't happen sooner, I can't say, but he finally does it now... only to fall in love with the villain's attractive daughter. The movie is as generic as it sounds. Now, there's some entertaining action scenes (even with too much CGI) and there's some colorful touches.

Those touches include there being a whole crew of hitmen all known as Mandrill. One of them is named Uncle Chone and he has to teach a protege how to be successful at the job; that's pretty much being like John Colt. Who's that, you ask? Why, that's the movie within the movie which is a wacky 70's spoof James Bond/martial arts thing.

While he's not John Wick, I think I would have preferred an entire John Colt film rather than this, where there are many different tones and there are many different elements (spy spoof, serious drama, action, exploitation, etc.) but it doesn't come together that successfully. I can still rate it as average due to the action and how the lead girl-Celine Reymond-does a swell job as the lead girl, but I was hoping for more and if you want to see Zaror in action, you should check out Undisputed III instead.