Dynamixor The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.
Fairaher The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.
Plustown A lot of perfectly good film show their cards early, establish a unique premise and let the audience explore a topic at a leisurely pace, without much in terms of surprise. this film is not one of those films.
Erica Derrick By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.
Michael Ledo There is nothing like getting cozy with a warm and fuzzy Danny Trejo vigilante film with a hot cup of cocoa made with my Keurig coffee machine bought on the Amazon. Oh Wait! I'm not in the vine program. Never mind.Danny Trejo, ex-Vietnam war vet, hot dog stand entrepreneur, becomes a reluctant vigilante after his war buddy Klondike (Harrison Page) was murdered. The police are dragging their feet on the investigation. The movie compares him to Charles Bronson, but at times he is more like Harry Brown. Ron Perlman has a minor role as the crooked mayor. Very cliche filled film.It attempts to be funny, but can really only muster mild humor. Perhaps the funniest aspect is how our tough BA vigilante takes the bus everywhere he has to go to find the bad guys. This is not the grindhouse style Trejo fans are used to seeing, although it does turn bloody after a slow start. It is worth a rental.Frequent F-bomb, brief sex, brief nudity
bensonmum2 Bad Ass reminded me a lot of one of those 70s era Blaxplotation films like Coffy where the good guy (or girl) is out to right a wrong because the police seem unable or unwilling to help. Frank Vega (Danny Trejo) is a Vietnam vet getting by 40 years later selling hotdogs from a cart. One day on a public bus, he comes to the aid of an old man being harassed by a couple of punks. A video shot by another passenger is put on the internet, leading to some local fame for Vega and a new nickname, "Bad Ass". But after his best friend is shot down just blocks from Vega's home, he'll have to put his new name to the test to bring the guilty to justice.I sincerely doubt that anyone involved with this movie thought they were making high art. Instead, they probably set out to earn a little money by making a reasonably entertaining film. And that's just what they did. Bad Ass is a solid movie and a lot of fun. Trejo is always a pleasure to watch. I really enjoyed the Everyman characteristics Trejo and the filmmakers brought to Vega. From watching Vega earn an honest dollar selling hotdogs to watching him brush his teeth, it's a character more grounded in reality than the type Trejo usually plays. The supporting cast is, for the most part, as good as you could hope for. Charles Dutton is a standout in the role of head baddie, Panther. Special effects, fight scenes, technical aspects, and the rest were serviceable enough. Overall, I enjoyed the movie and am looking forward to catching Part 2.There were, however, a couple of points that I didn't care for. Vega's beard and the forced love story were both unnecessary and hard to watch. Still, I'll give this one a 6/10.
SanteeFats Lots of action as was to be expected with the star and the title. It is nice to see Trejo getting some relatively good guy roles after all the (no pun intended) bad ass roles he played plus the really bad life he turned around. In this movie it is a good thing he is playing his age because he is starting to move like I do, an older man. Poor old Charles S. Dutton has not had a good guy role since "Roc", except for the Die Hard movie. Everything I have seen him in since he is a rotten cop, gang banger, or drug pusher. This movie is really just a platform for Trejo to make bank on after "Machete" and the sequel but it is entertaining. I really like the revenge factor of this movie when the best friend is murdered and that starts everything moving. They never say or I missed it, where the he got the flash drive but it is the catalyst for the rest of the movie. I like how they let the old guy still be forceful and powerful enough to beat up the bad guys. The one really interesting thing about the whole movie was Trejo never used a gun. This is a really decent B movie.
Theo Robertson really enjoy the vigilante thrillers but they are rather self limiting . A man finds himself wronged by the apathy of society and in a violent inciting incident decides to strike back at the bad guys . We've all been there and there's something cathartic about a fictional character torture , maim , mutilate and execute bad guys but at the end of the day it's difficult to do something new with the genre which ends up have a same-ish feel to it . There's very little original about BAD ASS . It features a Vietnam veteran as the hero and right away you're reminded of John Eastland played by Robert Ginty in THE EXTERMINATOR and one can't help thinking that the myth of the alienated violent loner Viet vet is mainly down to Hollywood That said if you're getting your information from Hollywood movies then you're a very sad person and it's amazing that some people are under the impression that this is based upon true events . From the outset BAD ASS probably plays upon this ignorance . We're asked to believe that protagonist Frank Vega spent seven years fighting in Vietnam including one year as a prisoner of the North Vietnamese ! So ask yourself how he escaped ? The truth is that some bloke got in to an altercation on a bus and the incident became a viral sensation on the web and that's the closest the film becomes to being based on true events . A lot of people seem to have taken the film both as too literally and too seriously but this isn't the mindset the film should be watched in and certainly isn't the spirit the film was made in so sit back and watch a fictional character kill some other fictional characters
