Review: Renegades
DVD & Digital: Renegades (2022)
Allow me to begin by first listing some of the cast members in Renegades: Lee Majors, Patsy Kensit, Danny Trejo, Michael Paré, Stephanie Beacham, Tommy ‘Tiny’ Lister, Ian Ogilvy, Nick Moran…a veritable cornucopia of acting talent that I’ve enjoyed watching for many years. So putting them all together in the same project must be a good thing right…right?
Well as good as it was seeing all those people onscreen together (though not necessarily at the same time in the same place thanks to some creative editing), the end result left me wondering if I’d actually enjoyed the 90 minutes that had just played out before me.
The plot is a tried and tested tale of revenge, this time involving a retired Green Beret who is killed by a London drug gang and his veteran comrades set out to avenge his death by any means they can.
I went in expecting a low budget British variation on The Expendables, and in a way I got just that, but unfortunately it was more to do with being low budget rather than being akin to the Stallone led actioner. Now while I’ve always been an advocate of low budget movies, this missed the mark for me more often than it hit it.
The lighting, directing and acting were flat, the action was unconvincing and certainly not helped by some terrible cgi effects (watch the cg blood on the wall wobble around in one shot as it’s not been tracked correctly), and the use of a drone where TWICE you could see its reflection clearly in windows was unforgivable…especially in a slow shot moving into a large window where it was very distracting, especially when it paused right in front of the window…but did make me giggle and rewind it to immediately watch that bit again.
Having said all of that it was a pleasure seeing so many familiar faces, especially Lee Majors who has been a huge hero of mine ever since I was completely addicted to The Six Million Dollar Man back in the 70’s, and while his time on screen was limited, it was an absolute pleasure to see him again.
Your enjoyment of Renegades may well reflect how much love you have for the actors in it and your penchant for watching low budget movies…though I should imagine that a fair amount of the budget was used getting so many ‘names’ involved.
Caught in a no man’s land between being good and ‘so bad it’s good’, this is a tough one to recommend.
Renegades is on digital 30th January and on DVD 13th February 2023 from 101 Films.
Review by Dave from a streaming link kindly supplied by 101 Films via Aim Publicity.