American Violence

American Violence (2017)

Runtime: 107 long minutes

Directed by: Timothy Woodward, Jr.

Starring: Kaiwi Lyman-Mersereau, Denise Richards (!), Emma Rigby, Michael Pare, Nick Chinlund

From: Status Media & Entertainment/BondIt

What a movie I stumbled upon... in a bad way; read below why you should avoid this:

I did not even know of this movie until last night; as sometimes happen, Letterboxd is the one who told me all about it. In this case, a mutual liked a ½ star review for this, and with such a generic title I was curious. There are some brutal reviews but because of the cast and it only being 99 cents at the moment on Amazon Video (and that also applies to the HD stream), I took a chance. Well, this was indeed pretty bad; I can see why a film that has small roles for both UFC Heavyweight Champion Stipe Miocic and ROB GRONKOWSKI (yes, the goofy but very talented American Football star who is best known for acting like he's still a college fratboy even though he left college years ago) was something which is unknown to most people.

This random director has directed random recent DTV action/thriller films that judging by IMDb are not too good (such as 4Got10, WEAPONiZED, and Decommissioned) and feature the usual slumming actors in this world, such as Vinnie Jones, Danny Trejo, and Michael Pare, the latter appearing in this. I am not surprised that him doing a crime drama where a criminal is about to be executed and a big reason for his ways is that he was molested by an uncle as a kid... of course this went astray, as he was being overly ambitious doing something like this.

The full plot is that a criminal (Jackson Shea) is about to be executed but a psychologist has to talk to him first. Note that this psychologist is played by DENISE RICHARDS, and she wasn't much better than she was as Dr. Christmas Jones. I guess we're supposed to feel bad for Shea because we see his life in flashbacks; he meets a bunch of scumbags who get him wrapped up in schemes where he just has to kill people, but he's still a scumbag himself who kills people. And wait until the movie has the temerity to get preachy... actually, don't watch this movie, just don't. It's poor and has a bunch of random crap happening and when it's not dull, the film is just laughable.

Besides the people I mentioned already, the familiar names include Nick Chinlund, Patrick Kilpatrick, Michael Pare and even Bruce Dern. His character Richard Morton (no, not 80's tag team wrestler Ricky Morton), when you first see him he is basically playing Woody Grant all over again, griping about a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. But, the other times you see him, he is just a real A-hole. The film is filled with sleazy characters, and I am not going to care for Shea because he's not as sleazy. It doesn't help that the movie is a cliché bore but I wish that the veteran actors I mentioned before would find better movies to do than nonsense like this.

Then again, I wish that actresses of any age did not feel like they needed to have surgery done in order to maintain or start a career; that definitely happened with Richards and judging by appearances, she wasn't the only one in the cast to do so. That's a big problem with the entertainment field in general, the gross focus on cosmetics, but that's another rant for another time.

Even if you like Miocic and/or Gronk, neither do much so you shouldn't waste your time. The movie is not as smart as it would like to think it is, not by a longshot.