As an official Razzies voter, I got emailed a list of suggested titles to be nominated at this year's awards, there are ten titles in each category, and this film was suggested for about five or six of them, so I had to see why. Basically, in a desert town in California, Jake Hunter (Paul Sloan) comes to town and stops off in a strip club. There he has an encounter with Bobby (Hudson Garland) who gives him attitude and provokes him into a fight. Then Bobby's father Ben Nichols (Jake Weber) arrives with his henchmen who knock him unconscious. He is taken to the police station and stays silent when interrogated by Nichols. Sheriff Kim (Mary Christina Brown) stops the henchmen suffocating Hunter with a bin bag and they leave. Hunter grabs Kim's gun and holds her at gunpoint to make his way out of the station and steals a police car. Nichols returns home and Bobby tells him he does not know who the man who attacked him was. Hunter pulls over to take weapons out of the trunk and remove the handcuffs from his wrist. The Sheriff calls him on the radio, he answers only to say he needs to find out what happened to his daughter. Meanwhile, Nichols is introduced by his friend Victor (Nick Vallelonga) to Chairman Doug Welmas (as himself) and Congressman Mike Ellis (Patrick Evans), and they have a meeting about a deal over water rights in the area. When Nichols returns home, Hunter arrives with a shotgun to see Bobby. At gunpoint, Bobby confesses that he does know Hunter's daughter Melissa (Claire Kniaz). A flashback reveals that Melissa was with Bobby and a group of people taking drugs. Hunter shoots Bobby dead (perhaps by accident) and flees when Bobby's aunt Maggie (Razzie nominated Taryn Manning) starts shooting at him. Hunter is chased by a group of mercenaries with machine guns through the nearby woods, although he evades and kills a few of them, he is injured. Officer Bartlett (Mike Hatton) arrives at the scene, fellow officer Stone (Brian Hayes Currie) orders him to shoot Hunter on sight. Bartlett is afraid and runs away, before being pinned down by Hunter, he gives him a message for Kim. Victor tells Nichols, who "runs the town", he needs to clear the mess up, and says sorry for Bobby being killed. While Hunter performs surgery on himself, a flashback shows conversations between him and his former boss Murphy (Richard Dreyfuss), and the fractured relationship between him and his daughter. Murphy is brought in to aid the situation and bring Hunter in. Another flashback reveals that Hunter tried to get his daughter clean of drugs with help from his brother Bill (Michael Madsen), a former drug addict. Hunter is found the following day by Stone and the mercenaries. Kim tracks Hunter using coordinates from Bartlett's locator that he took, he is sure that Nichols knows the circumstances of his daughter, and that there is a cover-up going on. Hunter tells Kim to look at the missing persons reports, and after she leaves, he tortures Stone for answers about what happened to Melissa. A flashback reveals that Stone witnessed Bobby having sex with Melissa whilst high on drugs and watched her die from a seizure. Hunter is enraged when Stone tells him that Nichols killed his daughter and stabs him with a knife through his head. Hunter goes to see Bill to find out where Melissa went and tells him that she with Bobby. Hunter speaks with Murphy on the police radio and says he will come in and bring those responsible for killing his daughter. Hunter steals a car and makes his way back to the police station, where many armed mercenaries are waiting for him. Following a shootout, Hunter is picked up by Kim, with Bartlett and Murphy, and asks them to take him to Nichols. When Nichols enters his home, Hunter is holding Maggie and demands to know what happened to his daughter. He breaks Maggie's fingers whenever he refuses to answer his questions. Nichols confesses that Bobby had a drug problem, as did Hunter's daughter, and says that it was a party with friends that got out of hand. When armed police arrive, Murphy calls Hunter out, and he brings them out with Nichols and Maggie. The last flashback reveals that Melissa was still alive following her seizure, Bobby wanted to save her, but Nichols insisted she was already close to death, and when Bobby and Stone left him, he drowned her in the lake, with Maggie watching from a distance. Nichols lies about how Hunter's daughter died, Hunter is emotional and, on Murphy's instruction, lowers his weapon. But it is Nichols and Maggie that are arrested. Kim comforts the bloodied Hunter and assures him that he is not the bad guy. Meanwhile, Bill makes a phone call to Hunter telling him to look after his daughter if he finds her, and if anyone should hurt her, they should "get what they deserve, every last one of them". It ends with Bartlett pulling over the police car, with Nichols and Maggie, and Murphy shoots them both dead with a machine gun. Also starring Viktoriya Dov as Jade and Dante Walker as Michaels. Sloan is reasonable as the leading anti-hero, Weber is a bit on-and-off as the villain, and Dreyfuss (apart from the ending) doesn't bring much to the table as the former boss. I can see why this can easily be compared to Rambo: First Blood, it is almost exactly the same concept, the tough guy on the run from the police, along with the bad guys, and things get violent. There is nothing wrong with the violence and when it goes all guns blazing, but the performances are lame, the dialogue is predictable, and the pace is uneven, it just feels too much like something you've seen before, a dull action thriller. Adequate!
Review of Every Last One of Them
