The Mercenary: Dominique Vandenberg, Alina Andrie, Louis Mandylor (2018)

[Drunken Monk]

This is now free of Prime Video.

It features some genuinely good action at times but everything else about this movie is pretty bad. Especially the terrible religious symbolism. I can’t help but feel this movie was made for $12 while Jesse V. Johnson awaited a bigger budget.

An okay watch if you’re bored and want to see some ultra violence (it’s very bloody), but I can’t say I’d aggressively recommend it.

[ShaolinMasterKiller]

6 hours ago, Drunken Monk said:

I can’t help but feel this movie was made for $12 while Jesse V. Johnson awaited a bigger budget.

Sadly, that's been one of my takeaways from more JVJ movies than I'd like to admit. To his credit, it almost always feels like the sort of issues holding his movies back from achieving their full potential are things that were beyond his control (budgetary restrictions, time restraints, etc.) I don't regret watching The Mercenary - I think it's perfectly serviceable for the microbudgeted DTV actioner that it is - but in this day and age when there's so much media out there competing for viewers' attention, I'd have preferred to wait a bit longer between movies in the hopes that it resulted in something more "polished", rather than getting a quick 'n' dirty "filler" movie that I likely won't ever revisit.
That said, a few quirks aside, I really liked Jessie's latest, "Debt Collectors", even though I can still point to several things in that movie where I feel like the aforementioned time and budget restraints reared their ugly heads.

Edited August 15, 2020 by ShaolinMasterKiller

[ShaOW!linDude]

Okay, watched this last night. I actually liked this movie more than I thought I would. (It's been sitting in my queue on Tubi for months.) The action is solid, and rather brutal. The plot line is nothing new, but I thought it was done well. Unlike DM, the religious angle didn't bother me. I didn't find it to overly preachy or campy. Louis Mandylor as the villain was good, even with the Australian accent, and he gets to chew the scenery a little. The hand to hand isn't flashy, but it is hard-hitting. I did think there times that bad angles were used, or the perspective was cut too soon. Small gripes on my part. I'd watch it again.

[One Armed Boxer]

On ‎8‎/‎16‎/‎2020 at 3:20 AM, Drunken Monk said:

It features some genuinely good action at times but everything else about this movie is pretty bad. Especially the terrible religious symbolism. I can’t help but feel this movie was made for $12 while Jesse V. Johnson awaited a bigger budget.

Interestingly Johnson was never supposed to direct this.  The original director was fired after 1 day of filming, so Johnson took over at the last minute as a favour to Vandenberg.  Subsequently he considers it more of a "director for hire" piece of work rather than his productions with Adkins where he's integrally involved.

[Drunken Monk]

10 hours ago, One Armed Boxer said:

Interestingly Johnson was never supposed to direct this.  The original director was fired after 1 day of filming, so Johnson took over at the last minute as a favour to Vandenberg.  Subsequently he considers it more of a "director for hire" piece of work rather than his productions with Adkins where he's integrally involved.

That clears things up as to why it seems like such an unusual production for Johnson.