Walking Tall: Lone Justice

source: Walking Tall: Lone Justice

The actors have my deepest sympathy for being involved in this. It was painful to watch from the horrible camera work to the coma inducing dialogue. The script must have been 50 pages long at best and the actors told to fill it out with stale insults and curse words. The action was only predictable about 98% of the time and the other 2% was glaringly obvious mistakes that shouldn't have never been allowed to make it into the film at all. Spoiler alert, the Clones from Star Wars are better marksmen than they were. I would say it's easy to chalk this up as just another "B" movie, but that would be a serious insult. This is definitely one for the dusty shelves of long forgotten cinematic rejects.

Combine a poorly-written script with unrealistic action sequences for a movie that would rate better than this one did. Fortunately for Kevin Sorbo, his fans won't care. They'd be happy watching him finger-paint for two hours. I like the man but his willingness to accept most any role just to get screen-time is shameful. Most great actors usually have some regard for quality before accepting a role. Not Kevin. As long as he gets to use his fists, but doesn't have to think much, he's happy. But, if common sense or critical thinking skills are required, the role doesn't fit his brand of stereotype. Needless to say, I won't be rushing to watch his next film.

One of the worst movies I've seen shoddy camera work, crappy filter usage, film was grainy, script was terrible, i mean come on, how predictable was the big battle at the end..... some of the fight scenes were okay i guess.... some scenes were so bad it was comical ...like Sorbo getting the horse and riding at the end...LOL i mean really ..a horse? Oh cant forget how the bad assassins roll around in the same vehicle throughout the entire movie..one would think that after killling key witness and federal agents, they woulda been tracked down..ETC, ETC really don't bother watching it...

Having watched "Walking Tall: The Payback" and "Walking Tall: Lone Justice" back to back, I can say that they are both equally good. Where "Walking Tall: The Payback" was more story-driven, "Walking Tall: Lone Justice" is more action-driven. Good or bad, up to the individual viewer, of course. The story in "Walking Tall: Lone Justice" is about Nick (played by Kevin Sorbo) who has moved from Dallas to start a new life with FBI agent Kate (played by Yvette Nipar) and her daughter Samantha (played by Haley Ramm). But Nick soon finds himself fighting to protect those who he love against ruthless drug cartel gang members as Kate is involved in a trial against them. Less thorough storyline compared to the "Walking Tall: The Payback" movie, but more action. So this trade off will of course appeal to some in the audience. The acting was good for a movie of this type, just don't expect anything extraordinary. Kevin Sorbo was without a doubt the driving talent carrying the movie. "Walking Tall: Lone Justice" is a mediocre action movie, but is still worth watching if you got an hour and a half to pass and just need a mindless action movie for entertainment.

The action starts earlier as witnesses are gunned down by gangsters while watching a stunning show by Ramona (Christina Hearn in her only movie. More!) going on in the apartment across the street. Kevin Sorbo follows up a long career as Hercules with a follow-up to Walking Tall: The Payback. He has a new girlfriend (Yvette Nipar) who is a federal agent that is to testify against the kingpin (Rodrigo De la Rosa) after the death of the witnesses. She has a smart 12-year-old daughter (Haley Ramm) that makes things interesting. She survives and they try to hit her again in the hospital. Sorbo takes her to his ranch to protect her. Things get ugly ala Rambo II, and Ramona shows her torture-* side, but then Sorbo shows his toughness. Naturally, we have the big showdown at the ranch. I have to get Walking Tall: The Payback.

A second straight-to-DVD sequel following on from WALKING TALL, a remake of a '70s action flick starring Dwayne Johnson. Kevin Sorbo had already appeared in a first sequel, which I haven't seen, but this one has a stand-alone storyline which is unconnected to the previous movies. In essence, it's a typical low budget action movie, very similar to the kind of stuff that Steven Seagal is making these days. Kevin Sorbo is the just, upright hero who falls foul of a sinister drug lord and his gang of ruthless dealers. People are killed, Sorbo kicks a little ass (including during one of those ultra-predictable scenes in which he stumbles upon a convenience store robbery) and it all builds to a showdown between the good guys and bad. In terms of quality, it's very much par for the course. I like Sorbo, have liked him since the days of HERCULES: THE LEGENDARY JOURNEYS, although it's not something I regularly watched. He seems like a genuinely nice guy, and that counts for a lot in my book. Of the supporting players, nobody really stands out, but the pace is good and there are some set-pieces that work, like the lengthy hospital interlude or a surprisingly nasty bit of torture. A big detraction from the film is the direction, which is absolutely horrible. Director Tripp Reed seems to equate style with shaking his camera all over the place, doing frenzied editing at all stages to boot. It doesn't work, it's an unnecessary detraction and really the only thing wrong with this movie; I can overlook the clichéd plot and characters, but not that direction. I cringe just thinking about it!

Kevin Sorbo is an ex-sheriff who must protect his cop girlfriend, Kate(Yvette Nipar)and her daughter Samantha(Haley Ramm)from drug-dealers she is set to testify against. What Kate or other federal agents will have to contend with is a dirty cop, Doug Maxwell(Mark W Johnson)on Latino gangster Perez'(Rodrigo De la Rosa)payroll. When the hoods almost kill Kate after their safehouse is invaded because of Maxwell's betrayal, Sorbo's Nick Prescott will hide her and Sam at his Boone County, Texas farmhouse, awaiting the next possible attack, prepared to do whatever he can to protect them from harm. While I think Sorbo is actually more appropriate in a Walking Tall movie than The Rock, this action movie suffers from an epileptic camera and badly angled shootouts. Too many movies have adopted the "24" approach to shooting action sequences, or simple dialogue scenes where the camera can not stay still or even contain characters in focus without moving constantly. It all becomes more than a bit aggravating. Still, I liked Sorbo in the lead, but there's nothing he can do when his director isn't able to control an impulse to shoot every single scene with an erratic camera. The villains would seem to be lifted from a Walker-Texas Ranger episode.

Poor, poor Elizabeth Barondes! After suffering through 1995's FULL BODY MASSAGE, 1998's SUICIDE: THE COMEDY, 2001's DESERT VAMPIRES (not to mention SEXUAL PREDATOR that same year), it only seemed fair that ER's ill-fated Heather would finally live through a feature film unscathed as FBI agent Marcia Tunney (a perky-sounding name, like Dana Scully) when teamed with big, strong, indestructible Texas vigilante lawman Nick Prescott (Kevin Sorbo) in WALKING TALL: LONE JUSTICE. No such luck! Since drug-lords and other baddies clipping off pinkies are a dime-a-dozen in action flicks nowadays, Agent Tunney has BOTH thumbs lopped away when she does not have the good grace to pass out after the first amputation. (Prescott is tied up five feet across from her by a bond so flimsy he breaks it with a shrug of his over-sized shoulders a minute later.) Director Tripp Reed records each severed digits' drop to the floor in loving detail. Perhaps it never dawned on Ms. Barondes, while accepting this role, that opposable thumbs are the main thing differentiating her from a lesser mammal, such as, say, a jack-ass.

I can enjoy a guilty pleasure vigilante flick, but this is just bad. And not bad in a way you might enjoy seeing MST3K make fun of it. It's just nauseatingly bad like you can't find anything to enjoy about this no matter how hard you try. I truly regret wasting 2 hours of precious life on this crap. You can tell by watching it that no one was asked to act and everyone in it knew this film would only bury their careers. Apparently "Walking Tall" has garnered enough income that someone decided they could make a buck off their investment. If it's not the worst film I've seen, it's so bad that it's blotted the worse films from my memory.