Kill Kane

Ray Brookes (Vinnie Jones) wakes up after being in an induced coma for 3 months. Don't worry, it is a movie coma, so his muscle strength and co-ordination are the same. He is a PE instructor who was left for dead after gangsters killed his family. Ray, like most men get lost driving. While retrieving a map out of the boot, he wanders around until he witnesses a murder. He is then visited by Kane (Sean Cronin) and his goons. And rather than just give the guy straight forward answers him and his family play around until they are all shot. For some reason Ray got a chest just rather than a bullet to the head. Ray doesn't trust police protection fearing he would be dead before any testimony and decides to go vigilante on the group, getting vengeance one gangster at a time. We have seen these type of vigilante films before. They really need something different, a hook for the audience. This one didn't have it. What made it worse was the suspense soundtrack sounded like a cat walking slowly on a piano. Guide: F-word. No sex or nudity.

KILL KANE has the makings of a decent revenge flick, at least on the page, but in reality it turns out to be a real dog of a movie, far too low budget to succeed as anything at all. A tired Vinnie Jones sleepwalks through the role of a father and family man who loses his loved ones in a shocking home invasion and thereafter goes on a rampage of revenge, taking down druggies and gang members along the way. It's extraordinarily cheap and slapdash, with laughable staging throughout and virtually no kind of action, suspense or momentum at any point; just mindlessness from beginning to end.

What did all these very negative critics expect? Shakespeare or a French Film-Noir-Movie? This is a cold and straight revenge movie, easily to find out before bothering watching. Within the genre it is superb. Without squiggle, psycho-crap or political message, but within the best tradition of hard-boiled English gangster movies. If you like these kind of movies, watch it.

What I learned from 2016's Kill Kane, is that Vinnie Jones can carry a movie (even if it is only seventy-four minutes long). He shows a decent amount of screen presence here and it's refreshing to see that he's not featured in a supporting role or a role in which he has the most minimal of dialogue. Vinnie scowls, ponders, appears defensive, and exterminates people. Oh and in certain bits of light, he actually looks like 1980's Sean Connery (I'm not kidding). Anyway, Jones plays PE teacher Ray Brookes. After witnessing a murder behind a trailer home, he is immediately ID'd by gangsters who break into his house and off his wife and two kids. Ray himself is left for dead but survives, waking up from a three month coma with revenge on his mind. As Kill Kane's running time flies by, Ray then starts to take the law into his own hands. Firearms, lying to police, stealthiness, reprisal, vanishing from the scene of the crime. If this all sounds familiar, it should. "Kane" is straight from the annals of 2014's John Wick, John Singleton's Four Brothers, Kill Bill, and Steven Seagal's Hard to Kill. When Vin's Brookes shoots dead one of the murderers who took his family away from him, he utters the words, "talk is cheap". A funny jab at the majority of Vinnie's acting career if you ask me. So OK, "Kane" is not wholly original, has few locations, feels low budgeted, has a small cast, and has almost no backstory when it comes to the characters (how the heck did Mr. Brookes achieve such a special set of skills?). No matter. First time director Adam Stephen Kelly gives the proceedings the veritable Michael Mann treatment. Not withstanding his overuse of darkly lighted and effectively quick-minded flashbacks, Kelly somehow provides the film with a raw sense of flair and verve. This keeps you distracted from its shortcomings. Add Vinnie's likable performance, some thick British accents, and a stirring musical soundtrack by Bobby Cole (he scored Valley of the Witch) and you've got a stylish, rogue thriller that's nasty in its disposition and stock on plot. Bottom line: Kill Kane isn't "killer" great but as a rental, this "Kane" is at least able. Of note: Don't be distracted by the flick's shootout ending which looks like a laughably skewed, Mexican standoff. Rating: 2 and a half stars.