Available at Amazon.com
Directed by
Tripp Reed
Cast:
Kevin Sorbo … Nick
Yvette Nipar … Katie
A.J. Buckley … Harvey
Gail Cronauer … Emma
Bentley Mitchum … Walter
Haley Ramm … Samantha
Jennifer Sipes … Krystal
Robert Paschall Jr. … Doyle Reed
Brad Leland … Mitch
You would think that the Down Home Revenge movie would be a subgenre that would lend itself well to the “Straight to DVD” market. Past examples, such as the Charles Bronson vehicle Mr. Majestyk, the original Walking Tall or even Road House, were films that didn’t require a lot of budget, but were still highly entertaining because of their tough guy heroes and straightforward plots. They were basically just modern Westerns, with good triumphing over evil, and if the hero had to get his hands dirty, then so be it. The films’ also had a certain brutality to them, which was largely missing from the 2004 remake of Walking Tall, which hurt the movie’s credibility as well as crippling its entertainment value. So to some degree I was curious to see if the R-rated “Straight to DVD” sequel, Walking Tall: The Payback, would be any different.
Not actually connected to the Walking Tall remake at all, this film stars Kevin Sorbo as Nick, the son of a murdered small town sheriff, who returns to his home to find the men responsible. Nick eventually learns his father was killed while investigating a shady land deal perpetrated by a local scumbag with a lot of clout named Harvey (A.J. Buckley). So taking up his father’s badge, Nick decides to clean up the town and take down the bad guys.
Smartly, the plot here is about as straightforward as an episode of The Dukes of Hazzard, our hero is easy to root for, and the villain is sleazy enough to make you really hate him. All of this should have added up for Walking Tall: The Payback to have been a rollicking Action movie that could have at least reached the level of a guilty pleasure. Unfortunately, too many problems result in this movie being a dreadful experience and a huge disappointment, even with lowered expectations going in. It boggles the mind why Sony even keeps putting these movies out if they’re just going to end up such small budgeted colossal failures.
The film’s main problem is definitely its pacing. For the first hour, the movie basically has two action scenes, one of which is the death of Nick’s father, and that scene doesn’t EVEN take place until the half hour mark. After that we get a pretty lame bar fight in which Nick takes out some of Harvey’s goons. Then in the last half hour, Director Tripp Reed and Writer Joe Halpin go the completely opposite way and make the mistake of overcompensating for the movie’s lack of action in its first two-thirds.
As if killing Nick’s father wasn’t enough, several of his friends are brutally murdered and an old girlfriend gets raped in a sequence that seems to last longer than most of the action scenes do. This paints the film into a corner that it’s completely unable to get out of. Much like another Revenge movie, 1982’s Forced Vengeance starring Chuck Norris, by the time film’s last action sequence rolls around, there’s nothing that the hero can do at the end of this picture to make its conclusion satisfying. The villains have simply taken away too much from the hero, who had spent much of his time in this movie doing nothing, to really make any sort of difference. By the time the movie’s final shootout has taken place, the movie has gone from mediocre to repugnant.
Walking Tall: The Payback is just another example of blown potential. There’s no reason a film like this can’t try to at least be entertaining, even with a small budget. The movie even managed to have a decent cast and acting that wasn’t cringe worthy, but blows it down the tube by not letting its hero get as brutal as its villains, and by waiting too long to just get moving. If Sony is going to keep putting these movies out, please just figure out a way to make them fun, instead of such a drag.
The Video
The movie is shot on digital, so the cinematography isn’t the best, but the print itself isn’t so bad. Actually the visual aspect of this DVD is really clean. The film is presented in Anamorphic Widescreen with an aspect ratio of 1.78:1.
The Audio
The Audio track is presented in Dolby Digital 5.1 and is also just fine. There’s never a point where the sound is too low and there’s a nice balance with the film’s soundtrack.
SPECIAL FEATURES: Deleted Scenes
Deleted Scenes – You get 6 deleted scenes, but really they’re not of much consequence, such as one where Nick shows up and sees the wreck of his father’s patrol car. The moment is pretty much a throwaway scene, which is what they did.
