Avengement

A British action film. Cain is in prison. He was an ordinary man when he went in; when he comes out his face is covered in scars, his teeth are metal and he speaks to nobody. He is given leave for a funeral and escapes. He goes straight to a bar. The bar is a closed room with the men of a criminal organisation inside; he locks the door. From there the film moves between the present and the past. In the present the reckoning in the bar goes on; in the past we are shown how Cain got this way: a job his brother used him for, a robbery that went wrong, a long sentence, and the fights that kept him alive inside. What the film is interested in is not revenge but transformation: the narrative shows a man deliberately hardened in prison, and who wanted it. The fights are the real work. The choreography is close, hard and short; the camera follows the actor and the cutting is kept sparse. Scott Adkins plays Cain. Craig Fairbrass, Thomas Turgoose and Nick Moran are in the cast. Jesse V. Johnson directed; it is one of the films he made with Adkins and counts as their best. Who it is for: anyone who likes hard direct-to-video action and fight choreography. Who it is not for: anyone sensitive to violence; the film is very bloody and its tone is angry throughout.