By Geno McGahee
A good cop, doing his job, loses his wife at the hands of some bad guys and now plans to take them down, one by one. This sound familiar? It should. Ninety percent of all 1980’s action films followed this formula and rightfully so. It’s a great outline to go by and it gave birth to the golden years of the genre. Unfortunately, we have gotten far away from it lately, but there was an attempt to bring it back. In 2003, A MAN APART was released featuring the hopeful action star, Vin Diesel, but the reaction from the public was mixed. Were they sick of the 1980’s style of action film? If they were, shame on them.
Sean Vetter (Vin Diesel) and his partner, Demetrius Hicks (Larenz Tate) have just got the bust of a lifetime. They have taken down the Mexican drug cartel kingpin, Memo Lucero (Geno Silva), but it has come with a price. After a big party, some bad guys invade Sean’s home and opens fire, killing his wife and leaving him for dead. He recovers, but he is not the same and vows revenge on the force that took out his wife. That force is a mystery and goes by the name of “Diablo.”
I was happy to see Juan Fernandez back in an action film like this. He played “Duke” in the Charles Bronson hit “KINJITE: FORBIDDEN SUBJECTS”, and now he plays the nephew of Memo, Mateo Santos. Another character that gives this film was Hollywood Jack (Timothy Olyphant). He was amusing in GONE IN SIXTY SECONDS, but he really owned this role. He was a complete prick and was a good enemy for Diesel. Their interactions are very entertaining.
Sean loses control of his emotions and when things get messy, he gets fired from the force. That doesn’t stop him from attacking the mysterious force of Diablo and avenging the death of his wife. There is a foreseeable twist in this, but they did try to add the element of surprise, and the pacing of this film is very good. It moves along at a brisk pace and ends with an action-packed climax.
Vin Diesel was being groomed to be the next Arnold Schwarzenegger but times had changed and with the success of PITCH BLACK and THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS, his career shifted in that direction rather than other films that followed this sort of storyline. He has gone where the money was, but A MAN APART proved that he could be the man to replace the guys like Van Damme, Seagal, Stallone and Schwarzenegger, who were fading away.
A MAN APART is an outstanding film with some 1980’s flare, but approaches it more seriously. It is dark and gritty and mixes together a lot of different characters and elements, making it work in this kick-ass action flick.
I highly recommend A MAN APART. It is a shame that the reception wasn’t better for this. Diesel created a character that could have been part of a franchise under the A MAN APART banner, and maybe there is still hope that Diesel will return to this sort of action sub-genre. He proved it here that he could carry a film like this.
Rating: 8/10