Hellfire, the latest from DTV stalwart Isaac Florentine (most famous for Undisputed 2: Last Man Standing), is sure to please fans of the genre. It’s basically old man Rambo with a western twist. The cast was the selling point for me with Stephen Lang as the nameless savior, Dolph Lundgren as the corrupt sheriff, and Harvey Keitel as the drug lord holding the entire town hostage. The film handles all the basics just fine, and there are a few deviations and quirks that make it stand out.
For the basics, the plot sets up the perfect simple story of good guys and bad guys. It’s 1988, and the small town of Rondo, Texas, is being terrorized by a drug lord and his son. He uses the local brewery as a front for drug smuggling and forces the entire town to help. If they fight back or try to inform on Keitel, they get hurt or even killed. Bar owners Lena (Scottie Thompson) and her father, Owen (Chris Mullinax), are especially threatened since Keitel’s son has taken a liking to Lena, a widow who lost her husband in Vietnam. The film’s cold open ends with her praying to him, asking for an angel to be sent.
That angel is Stephen Lang, a Vietnam vet drifter just making his way through town. As you can imagine, he gets told immediately and constantly that outsiders aren’t welcome, and he needs to move along. If you can believe it, he doesn’t move along, and violence ensues.
From a pure action/revenge standpoint, Hellfire is fine. It moves along quickly, and some of the fights are decent (though the sound effects, especially for punches, are distractingly bad). There’s a lot of basic bad guy shit going in this, but things ramp up to unexpected brutality in the final third. It makes the film stand out, for sure.
The cast is still the strong point here, and Lang does a fine job as an elder Rambo. He isn’t too severe about it, but he still effortlessly conveys that he can beat anyone’s ass at any given moment. And it was nice to see him in a non-blue role. Keitel can play a dirtbag in his sleep, so he’s fine. And a toned down villain is kind of nice since it wouldn’t make sense for a mad dog-type to get away with the shit he’s doing. But Dolph Lundgren stands out for me. It’s clear that they only had him for a few days as his role is woefully small. His conflicted sheriff was the most interesting character, and Lundgren pulled it off when I was initially worried about a Swede playing a Texas sheriff. I think the film would have been much more compelling had they saved some money by going with a smaller name for Keitel’s part, allowing Lundgren to work longer and beef up the role.
Most people aren’t coming to Hellfire for conflicted villains, though. If you just want to see an old man take on drug smugglers, then you’ll have a good time with this. This isn’t going to blow anyone away, but there’s something to be said for films like this. It reminded me of the kind of movies Burt Reynolds used to make, like Malone. Nothing groundbreaking, just some decent action with a compelling plot. Hellfire has that and a little more.
Random Thoughts (SPOILERS)
My biggest issue with stories like this usually boils down to “Why do the bad guys keep sparing the people against them?” Hellfire doesn’t have that problem. Once it’s clear Lang is going to be a problem, they try to kill him. When the town rallies around him, every one of them is slaughtered, and Lang only gets away because they thought he was already dead, and he sneaks out while they’re getting rid of the bodies. This movie gets dark fast at the end. It truly shocked me when the first townsperson was shot.
A real issue I had was with the time setting of the film. Lang just looks too old to be a Vietnam vet in 1988. I get that they wanted to avoid cell phones and whatnot, and they did a decent job of keeping things period accurate (with the exception of Lundgren’s cop car), but it took me out of the movie trying to do the age math. If we’re being generous and calling Lang 60 (he’s 73, but was probably 70 when it filmed [more on that later]), then that puts him at least in his mid-40s during Vietnam. It’s not unheard of, but it’s rare enough that I wish they just had a line of dialogue to explain it.
The film also presents the possibility that Lang truly is an angel or something because he literally disappears as he walks away during the credits. If that’s the case, then he’s a shitty angel as he got the whole town killed. Ignoring the disappearing aspect, it is revealed that he was under Keitel’s command in Vietnam, and Keitel’s orders led to the death of a lot of soldiers. So was Lang always just on a revenge mission, and the angel shit was just a coincidence. If so, once again, it’s pretty shitty that he got the whole town killed (except for Lena) for a personal vendetta. Just show up and shoot Keitel, dude. No need to Count of Monte Cristo this shit and fuck up everybody.
Lundgren’s character surprised me when he basically decided enough was enough. Normally, his character would’ve been treated as a mini-villain to be taken care of before the main fight. But he gains a conscience, which immediately earns him some bullets to the chest. It’s realistic, but it left me wanting more from him.
For whatever reason, this has been shelved for over three years. I don’t understand why, though the eight or nine production company logo sequences at the beginning certainly made sense once I found that out. I figured the three big names alone could have sold this sight unseen. But I suppose names don’t mean as much these days.