Verdict
Summary
Stand Your Ground is the third vehicle action film for star Stisen, after his rock solid first entry Last Man Down showed that he was a real contender to take up the mantle for all these WWE type actioners with larger-than-life superstars in the center. His second film was the disappointing The Siege, which was set in and around one drab warehouse, and now comes the complete disaster that is Stand Your Ground, which completely squanders Stisen’s stoic, badass persona. It doesn’t do him or anyone else in the film any favors
Plot:
An immigrant Special Forces soldier goes to war against a crime lord for an unjust crime against his family.
Review:
Jack Johnson (Norwegian action star Daniel Stisen) and his pregnant wife Morgan (Roxi Kravitz) move to a rural town that is overrun with bad business, as we’ll soon find out. It is notable to the plot that Jack is an Aryan badass, a former Special Forces soldier looking to start a family with his wife, who happens to be black. As soon as they start moving into their new home (literally the day they arrive in a moving truck), they’re warned by a (black) sheriff (in the first of a great many awkwardly uncomfortable scenes to follow) that they’re basically unwelcome in this town. Sure enough, later on a group of masked (white) thugs break in, beat the snot out of Jack, and brutally murder Morgan and the baby in her belly. Just as the thugs are running away, Jack grabs a gun and kills the last one out as he’s running across his lawn. This, the courts deem, is murder, not self-defense. Jack goes to prison. But what’s worse is that Jack killed the son of the local crime lord – an Aryan scumbag named Bastion (Peter Stormare in the most reprehensible movie villain role I’ve seen in years) – who vows complete and utter vengeance on Jack when he’s eventually released from prison. Years pass, and Jack gets out, and has a pretty simplistic plan of revenge all sorted out: He’ll piss off Bastion again and rattle his cage, and force him and all of his goons to invade his home so that he can use the “stand your ground” law that says you can kill someone inside your home as long as they enter and are there when you kill them. But Bastion is not that big of an idiot … until he is that big of an idiot after going completely mental when Jack kills off tons of his guys in his booby-trapped home. But this movie’s philosophy is so lopsided and wrong that anything that happens feels forced and incorrect, especially for a pretty simple setup with a tough guy in the center of it.
Stand Your Ground is the third vehicle action film for star Stisen, after his rock solid first entry Last Man Down showed that he was a real contender to take up the mantle for all these WWE type actioners with larger-than-life superstars in the center. His second film was the disappointing The Siege, which was set in and around one drab warehouse, and now comes the complete disaster that is Stand Your Ground, which completely squanders Stisen’s stoic, badass persona. It doesn’t do him or anyone else in the film any favors (Eric Roberts plays a wacky neighbor who lives in a camper trailer) because the plot depends on vile, racist characters to thrive and basically win over the good guy (the ending ensures that there will never be a sequel, let’s put it that way), and to watch that sort of thing play out for the sake of entertainment is just torture, man. This was more difficult to watch that any average home invasion horror slasher such as The Strangers because the formula here should have been an easy win. The last Rambo movie Last Blood basically did the same thing, but didn’t have such a reprehensible villain with zero appeal (and I mean zero), and I’m not sure if Stormare stuck to the script or went off rez with some of his dialogue, but it goes way beyond the pale. He’s one of the most heinous bad guys I’ve ever seen in a movie, and that’s putting it nicely. I absolutely hated him, and because he’s so overpowering, the movie feels scaled way too far in his direction. Stisen is hopelessly lost in this mess of a movie, and even the action and fight scenes are shot too dark, choppily, and quick to have any lasting effect. There’s no catharsis for viewers with this one. It’s just the pits. From director Fansu Njie.
Epic Pictures has just released a Blu-ray edition of Stand Your Ground. It’s affordably priced to own.
