Vigilante (2008)
When Luke is viciously attacked and his fiancée is raped and murdered, he pledges to train himself in deadly hand to hand combat and use it against any wrong doers who dare to cross his path.
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You won't be disappointed!
Save your money for something good and enjoyable
I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.
This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.
Original article review at: http://coolawesomemovies.blogspot.com/2010/03/vigilante.htmlThis was the only unplanned entry in our month of Man Fest 2010, which I decided to watch on a whim. Why? Let's see Manly title? Vigilante. Check. Manly poster? Check. Manly tagline? Revenge is his profession. Check. Manly plot? Check. and that's pretty much all I needed to know. It must be said this is a very low budget Australian film (written and directed by Aash Aaron). Taking all into consideration, it wasn't bad at all. Unfortunately, it also wasn't as badass as I wanted it to be. "Vigilante" is about a man named Luke (Robert Diaz) whose fiancée has been brutally raped and murdered by Alex (Kazuya Wright) , the spoiled son of the most influential (and corrupt) family in the city. After the law, like always, does nothing to apprehend the perps, Luke starts training with master Leigh (Glenn McLaren) who teaches him all sorts of ass kicking techniques to become the Vigilante who's essentially a poor man's Punisher. The thing gets complicated when Luke becomes romantically involved with the hot redhead detective Pauline (Lexie Symon) who's been assigned to crack the Vigilante case.The budgetary constraints obviously manifested themselves on screen. "Vigilante" does look pretty cheap, but I didn't view it as a problem at all when writing this review. What I hold against it is the lack of true badassery in terms of fight scenes. There weren't any shootouts, with the Vigilante not being a weapons expert like Frank Castle. The battle scenes left much to be desired and Robert Diaz was never truly convincing in this particular role as an enraged avenger. I would've very much preferred if him and Kazuya Wright (now, how cool of a name is this? Goddamn!) had switched places. Kazuya, one the other hand, was totally awesome.The whole film as a concept was great, especially to me because I'm a great Punisher fan (and there's even a nod to him in "Vigilante"), but the execution is just kind of I don't know, not on the level. On a positive note, "Vigilante" features some great heavy metal tunes all throughout. And it also has a simple, but good philosophical debate (of sorts) on the topic of vigilantism being right or wrong, held between Luke and Pauline... in which, by the way, Pauline gets owned.Now, I can't really recommend "Vigilante". It didn't hold up to my expectations, at least not completely. But on the other hand, I love independent cinema and this was a very commendable effort.Rating: 6/10
I'm not sure who the people giving this 8 and 9 are, but they didn't watch the same movie I did. So, what can you expect.The acting is B grade (or lower). The sound is terrible (I think every punch in the movie has the same sound). Colour is off. The writing is poor and unbelievable. But, worst of all, the plot sucks.And that's really the most important thing in a low budget movie. You can put up with bad acting or bad sound, as long as the story is something fresh and new. That's how Mad Max and Saw came about (and to a lesser extent, Paranormal Activity and Blair Witch).But Vigilante's plot is almost a carbon copy of The Punisher, and even then it's not original.If you happen to live in Qld (Gold Coast) you might find a redeeming feature by seeing 'your town' on the screen, but for most people, just watch the Thomas Jane / John Travolta version of The Punisher (which in itself is flawed, but much better).
What I really love about Aussie films is their originality.We do our own thing with genre films and add our own flavour.Take ICU for instance, sure Rear Window is an influence, but who has done a film like this before that is about kids spying on people while being spied on.As well as it being a who done it serial killer thriller and black comedy?Vigilante was also an original twist on the revenge film.Luke played well enough by Robert Diaz is a guy punching his way through villains without a real mission because he has no idea who killed his girl friend but because he causes such a nuisance of himself attracts the attention of the bad ass Kazuya Wright who wants to track him down to please his mob boss father. That was Gold if you ask me!Cheers Aash, keep pumping these thrillers out!
What an amazing filmmaker. While most here in Australia only talk about making films this guy actually does it. So my hat is off to you buddy. Anyone who has shot a short film knows how hard it must be to make a feature film and you have made 2 films. Vigilante & ICU. Wow. I dream to make one of my scripts into a feature but it just seems impossible with budgets to raise and a cast & crew to wrangle. But when you follow the plight of guys like Aash it makes it all much more a reality. Keep on rocking on Aash and I look forward to following the rest of your movies. I have seen both Vigilante and ICU and I can tell you one thing about Aash Aaron he makes entertaining movies which is more than I can say for most.