Here’s a sequel nobody asked for to a movie that no one saw. The 2018 release I Am Vengeance was a negligible action movie that once dominated the theatrical market. You know the kind: They usually starred Chuck Norris, Jean-Claude Van Damme or any number of actors of similar caliber whose only real job onscreen was to look beefy and stoic and beat up bad guys and their henchmen. A contractual obligation might have required their B-stars to provide minimal services to a sequel (or two or three) if the producers came calling, and that seems to be what has happened to former professional wrestler and bareknuckle boxer Stu Bennett, whose now-franchise role John Gold returns in I Am Vengeance: Retaliation with all the enthusiasm of a mere contractual obligation.
Such obligation is the only reason this movie could possibly exist. Like the first film, this is a VOD release, and the obviously low budget clearly aided in getting this sequel to come out less than two years later. It seems impossible that anyone might have wanted a follow-up to a movie with no discernible personality, either as an action movie or as a vehicle for Bennett, who proved two years ago that he should have stayed far away from a camera and anyone operating it. Here we are, though, with Gold hired to track down and, much to his bloodthirsty chagrin, arrest his presumed-dead arch-nemesis Sean Teague (Vinnie Jones).
Teague betrayed and murdered most of the men in Gold’s unit several years ago, and in one of the many logical inconsistencies in the screenplay, we learn that his years in hiding have led to more mindless slaughter. This would mean that Teague was a master of concealment despite the maintenance of his reputation, which, of course, makes absolutely no sense in any way. Whatever. This time, Gold and his current team (most of whom are indistinguishable from each other, except for a female second-in-command played by Phoebe Robinson-Galvin) join forces with the vengeful Jen Quaid (Katrina Durden), who wants to shorten the prison sentence being built for Teague. It’s the sweet release of his death that Quaid desires, as Teague’s violence hit her personally.
This all is just an excuse for knock-down, drag-out fight sequences, staged as poorly as ever by writer-director Ross Boyask, who apparently learned nothing about how to direct actors in the short break between making these two movies. The film proves difficult to distinguish from the last one as well, from its general trajectory (hero’s welcome, main plot, a bunch of fighting, credits) to its indistinctive visual style. Perhaps the main difference is the presence of Jones, a wilier villain than the dull one Gold faced off against in the first film. Teague has a twisted sense of humor, whether he’s looking at a totaled car from whose wreckage he just emerged without a scratch and commenting ironically about how far gone it is or asking Gold to “his office,” which is just another opportunity to instigate a new knife fight. But that isn’t nearly enough to elevate I Am Vengeance: Retaliation, a movie made for no reason and a nonexistent audience.
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