Kill Kane

Ray Brookes (Vinnie Jones) wakes up after being in an induced coma for 3 months. Don't worry, it is a movie coma, so his muscle strength and co-ordination are the same. He is a PE instructor who was left for dead after gangsters killed his family. Ray, like most men get lost driving. While retrieving a map out of the boot, he wanders around until he witnesses a murder. He is then visited by Kane (Sean Cronin) and his goons. And rather than just give the guy straight forward answers him and his family play around until they are all shot. For some reason Ray got a chest just rather than a bullet to the head. Ray doesn't trust police protection fearing he would be dead before any testimony and decides to go vigilante on the group, getting vengeance one gangster at a time. We have seen these type of vigilante films before. They really need something different, a hook for the audience. This one didn't have it. What made it worse was the suspense soundtrack sounded like a cat walking slowly on a piano. Guide: F-word. No sex or nudity.

KILL KANE has the makings of a decent revenge flick, at least on the page, but in reality it turns out to be a real dog of a movie, far too low budget to succeed as anything at all. A tired Vinnie Jones sleepwalks through the role of a father and family man who loses his loved ones in a shocking home invasion and thereafter goes on a rampage of revenge, taking down druggies and gang members along the way. It's extraordinarily cheap and slapdash, with laughable staging throughout and virtually no kind of action, suspense or momentum at any point; just mindlessness from beginning to end.

What did all these very negative critics expect? Shakespeare or a French Film-Noir-Movie? This is a cold and straight revenge movie, easily to find out before bothering watching. Within the genre it is superb. Without squiggle, psycho-crap or political message, but within the best tradition of hard-boiled English gangster movies. If you like these kind of movies, watch it.

What I learned from 2016's Kill Kane, is that Vinnie Jones can carry a movie (even if it is only seventy-four minutes long). He shows a decent amount of screen presence here and it's refreshing to see that he's not featured in a supporting role or a role in which he has the most minimal of dialogue. Vinnie scowls, ponders, appears defensive, and exterminates people. Oh and in certain bits of light, he actually looks like 1980's Sean Connery (I'm not kidding). Anyway, Jones plays PE teacher Ray Brookes. After witnessing a murder behind a trailer home, he is immediately ID'd by gangsters who break into his house and off his wife and two kids. Ray himself is left for dead but survives, waking up from a three month coma with revenge on his mind. As Kill Kane's running time flies by, Ray then starts to take the law into his own hands. Firearms, lying to police, stealthiness, reprisal, vanishing from the scene of the crime. If this all sounds familiar, it should. "Kane" is straight from the annals of 2014's John Wick, John Singleton's Four Brothers, Kill Bill, and Steven Seagal's Hard to Kill. When Vin's Brookes shoots dead one of the murderers who took his family away from him, he utters the words, "talk is cheap". A funny jab at the majority of Vinnie's acting career if you ask me. So OK, "Kane" is not wholly original, has few locations, feels low budgeted, has a small cast, and has almost no backstory when it comes to the characters (how the heck did Mr. Brookes achieve such a special set of skills?). No matter. First time director Adam Stephen Kelly gives the proceedings the veritable Michael Mann treatment. Not withstanding his overuse of darkly lighted and effectively quick-minded flashbacks, Kelly somehow provides the film with a raw sense of flair and verve. This keeps you distracted from its shortcomings. Add Vinnie's likable performance, some thick British accents, and a stirring musical soundtrack by Bobby Cole (he scored Valley of the Witch) and you've got a stylish, rogue thriller that's nasty in its disposition and stock on plot. Bottom line: Kill Kane isn't "killer" great but as a rental, this "Kane" is at least able. Of note: Don't be distracted by the flick's shootout ending which looks like a laughably skewed, Mexican standoff. Rating: 2 and a half stars.

Review: This is another one of those cheap, "straight to DVD" movies from Vinnie Jones, which will be quickly forgotten. He plays a happily married, family man who witnesses a murder, which is committed by a bunch of gangsters, in the middle of nowhere. The gangsters then set out to make sure there wasn't any witnesses to the crime, and they brutally murder Ray Brookes (Vinnie Jones), family, right in front of him. The leader of the gang, Kane Keegan (Sean Cronin), thinks that he has killed Ray but he manages to survive, and he sets out to get revenge. That is the basic gist of the storyline! Vinnie Jones is playing his usual "tough nut" type of role, with a cockney accent, and the rest of the cast, put in pretty poor performances. I can totally understand why Vinnie Jones went on a killing spree but what shocked me was that the gangsters that he was killing, didn't seem to care that he survived and had a gun pointed to there heads. Anyway, I personally didn't think that it was that great and it just goes down as another badly made movie, by Vinnie Jones. Maybe he should go back to playing football! Disappointing! Round-Up: It's obvious that Vinnie Jones, 51, only stars in these terrible movies to pay bills, because he honestly can't think that these low budget movies are going to do his career any good. His first taste of stardom in big movies like X-Men: The Last Stand, Swordfish, Snatch, Lock Stock, Gone in 60 Seconds etc, really does seem long ago now, and his acting skills haven't really progressed since he became an household name, after his great performance in Lock Stock in 1998. Anyway, it might do him some good if he changes his agent because these movies are going from bad to worse. This is the first major release from Adam Stephen Kelly, who also wrote this movie, which doesn't say a lot about his script writing skills. For his first major project, it's passable but the sketchy script really wasn't that great. I recommend this movie to people who are into their crime/thrillers starring Vinnie Jones, Nicole Faraday, Sebastian Street, Sean Cronin and Dan Richardson. 2/10

Vinnie hits a new low, very low. I couldn't even get through twenty minutes of it before giving up. Charles Bronson's version of the same concept was so much better. There is no plot because the suspense required to carry it is given away in the summary and there is little surprise at any point in this movie. Vinnie is your basic brute in everything I've ever seen him and he follows a typical path of blood and punishment. The only difference here is that the script is so bad and the scenes so disjointed in an effort to be dramatic that it becomes worse than comical or even satirical. It would have been a better movie to go all out on the satire of the genre. There are no redeeming features to this movie. Even the English accents can't hide how bad it is. Trouble is, the actors are doing their best in an otherwise copy cat movie with a generic script. They don't have much to work with. Vinnie should have run as far as he could from this "movie". He is capable of something better.

Did not want to dislike 'Kill Kane'. It was again not a bad, if not new, premise and Vinnie Jones has given dependable performances in the past. It had potential to work, and would have done with effort being obvious and like those in front of and behind the camera had their hearts in it. Neither of which can be seen with 'Kill Kane', something that is really quite unforgivable. Have seen worse films, recently and ever, but that doesn't stop 'Kill Kane' from being a very poor film with no redeeming traits and a lot of things done absolutely terribly. There is not much to add to what has been said very well already and the review is at the risk of repeating what has been said. Just for the record, 'Kill Kane' was watched with an open mind and not without the intent or want to dislike, let alone hate, the film, quite the contrary. All the acting ranges from insipid to terrible, nobody looks engaged or at ease. Jones phones in and lacks vigour and intensity for a role needing both for it to work. In all fairness the characters are clichéd and are never engaging or easy to get behind, didn't care or endear to any of them. The chemistry is static, likewise with the barely existent direction. The script is from start to finish is a cringe, weep and toe curl-fest with lots of overblown soap-opera melodrama and no depth whatsoever. Furthermore, the story has no tension or suspense whatsoever, is very lifelessly paced and executes a not particularly new if intriguing idea with no imagination or originality. Basically non-stop indifferent dullness and predictability that takes itself far too seriously to be fun. 'Kill Kane' has a very dreary, one-note and less than slick visual style with well below average visuals and no attempt at authenticity. The sound is monotonous and over obvious, while the lighting lacks atmosphere and consistently and the photography lacks focus and often static in the more dramatic scenes. In conclusion, awful with a noticeable lack of effort. 1/10 Bethany Cox

Adam Stephen Kelly made his directorial debut with "Kill Kane," a brutal British crime thriller about revenge. Andrew Jones, Christian Sellers, and Adam Stephen Kelly penned the hardboiled screenplay that synthesizes elements of the Charles Bronson movie "Death Wish" and the Steven Seagal movie "Hard to Kill." Clocking in at 74-minutes, this grim bit of business doesn't beat about the bush. Our resilient hero gets lost while driving around on a family outing and pulls over to fish a map out of the trunk of his car. He witnesses--through a hole in a fence--the execution slaying of a low-life criminal, Tommy (Mitchell Fisher), in a backlot. Poor Tommy—it seems—suffered from loose lips, talking too much about his own gang. Before Noonan (Dan Richardson of "Retribution") pulls the trigger on a kneeling Tommy, he comments "But sometimes a potter has got to know that the clay he's working with is just no good." Unfortunately, the villains spotted the van that our father figure, a gym teacher Ray Brookes (Vinnie Jones of "Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels") who has been teaching for fifteen years. Miraculously, Ray survived a fatal gunshot wound and spent three months in a coma. This is where "Kill Kane" opens as Ray recovers in the high dependency unit of a local hospital. Of course, Ray refuses to cooperate with the authorities because he believes that they cannot offer him adequate protection from the gangsters. British Detective Inspector Shelby (Sebastian Street of "Vehemence") questions Ray about the criminals, but Ray keeps his mouth shut. After he recovers from his coma, Ray has to contend with Shelby again, who wants him to testify against the criminal. Ray turns him down. Ray hunts down Billy Malone (newcomer Benjamin Way) and stabs him to death. Afterward, he catches up with the dastard, Conner O'Brien (Conor Boru of "Spiked"), who capped his daughter Victoria Brookes (Sarah Alexandra Marks of "Illegal Activity") at point blank range in the head. Ray tangles with the ringleader of the ruffians, Kill Keegan (creepy looking Sean Cronin of "The World Is Not Enough"), but Shelby intervenes in their standoff showdown. He tries to convince Ray to stand down, but our protagonist guns Kane down while Shelby watches. Shelby advises Kane to clear out of town. Predictably, Kane ignores Shelby and shows up the next day at Frank Noonan's bar where he confronts Noonan (Dan Richardson of "Retribution") and blows his head off. Mind you, "Kill Kane" is not a lighthearted lark. Murderers with no qualms about killing shoot harmless innocents at close range and appear to enjoy their acts of mayhem. Adam Stephen Kelly never lets the action loiter. Jones is his usual brawny self, but he elicits sympathy as the father left without a family. Meantime, Cronin makes a terrific villain. Shelby is good as a sympathetic cop who lets our hero off the hook. Reminiscent of the Michael Caine gangster movie "Get Carter," except Vinnie survives the fracas. This no-nonsense crime thriller isn't as awful as some of the user critics claim. Although he covers familiar ground, director Adam Stephen Kelly doesn't bore us with a lot of meaningless details. He goes for the gut, and "Kill Kane" never wears out its welcome.

I could sum up this story in a few short sentences. Guy witnesses a gang member being shot so gang go after him and kill his wife and kids and he goes after them one by one until he gets to the big boss. The End. So many plot holes in this its unreal. How did he just happen to get the names and locations of everyone involved and turn up at their front door, car and club and just kill them? Was it intentional to make the big boss out to be a derivative of a cross between Tony Blair and David Cameron? Seriously I should've checked the IMDb reviews before subjecting myself to this drivel but was looking more for a solid story with Vinnie at the head of it all with some originality. Gone are the days of Lock Stock and Midnight Meat Train. Welcome to the world of spend a budget because its there and to hell with the result.

So we have all seen the look I'm in a gang, I'm hard I've got a gun bang bang roll credits type movies, the shelves are full of them this is what makes it oh so different. Kill Kane starting out shows Vinnie not as the usual Hard Nut but as a family man going about his daily life, then they see something that changes the course of there lives which forces Vinnie's hand. Very well laid out and bring together a multitude of nightmare scenarios being in the wrong place, firm after you, family being held hostage and the rest I wont say you will just have to watch but to all the other reviews seriously unfair. The Direction was excellent and the whole thing was excellent