Lights Out

I love discovering actors no matter what genre they are in. Actors i have never heard of before or for some reason i didn´t notice if they had a smaller role to begin with. Not all actors start off in a big full feature film, in fact most actors usually have to work their way through the film industry to finally get to bigger productions. Just look at George Clooney for example and i remember seeing him for the first time in the 1988 horror comedy Return Of The Killer Tomatoes. Who would have known back then he would become a huge Hollywood star in the 90´s. I can honestly say this is a terrible film but at least you can have fun with it, if you are in the right mood. How many of you did see Cyborg 2 the 1993 sci fi action film with actress Angelina Jolie ( the sequel to the 1989 Van Damme classic Cyborg ) ? I remember seeing the film on VHS back in the day but i had no idea Angelina would become a Hollywood box office star in the 2001 action film Lara Croft: Tomb Raider. At some occations we do discover actors in Hollywood films that actually are really good and we just don´t recognize the actor from any other films. That happened to me when i saw the 2011 action sports drama film Warrior directed by Gavin O´Connor. Warrior is a really powerful sports drama with really good acting from Tom Hardy, Nick Nolte and Joel Edgerton. It was in this film i disovered actor Frank Grillo for the first time, and it would turn out that he would do a lot more films. It was in 2014 i really feel he got recognized worldwide in the sequel The Purge: Anarchy ( my personal favourite in this franchise ). I really enjoyed him in the 2017 sci fi action sequel Beyond Skyline and he have done several good films i can easily recommend since then. One thing i knew i wanted to see ever since i heard about it was a film called Lights Out, simply because it looked like an old school street fighting film from the 80´s or 90´s. Is this a film that should be seen by a larger audience or is Lights Out not as fun as i was hoping it would be?

Duffy ( Frank Grillo ) is a drifter and a war veteran struggling with PTSD. His life at this point is living in motels, taking one day at a time just to survive. He gets into a bar fight after a poker game and manage to get out with cash. One bar visitor named Max ( Mekhi Phifer ) is impressed by Duffy´s fighting skills and see an oppurtunity to introduce him to a undergound fight club. Duffy wins his first fight without any problems and Max continue to promote Duffy to make sure he gets booked on more fights. Max owns crime boss Sage Parker ( Dermot Mulroney ) a lot of money and make a deal with Sage. Duffy doesn´t know all the details and just accept the fights, but his PTSD is causing some problems along the way while Duffy gets more pressure as each fighter becomes more difficult.

If you are a big fan of the Jean-Claude Van Damme classic 1990 film Lionheart ( directed by Sheldon Lettich ) then you are going to be thrilled over Lights Out. This is actually a similar film with a different plot, but you can recognize the style of Lights Out and feel that this film is clearly inspired by the Van Damme classic with military action added to spice things up. In the 1990 film Lionheart the main character Lyon Gaultier is a French Foreign Legion and in Lights Out the main character Duffy played by Frank Grillo is veteran soldier, so already there you can see the pattern matches pretty well. In Lionheart you saw street fights going on and we actually see something similar in Lights Out. What i appreciate about this is that this film tries to bring back similar styles as Lionheart into modern cinema. Even the friendshhip between Duffy and his match fixer Max Bomer almost feels similar to the frienship between Lyon and his match fixer Joshua. One thing this film also does is bring back war memories in some scenes as Duffy is clearly suffering with PTSD. You might think that a fighting film such as this only have terrible acting but i have to say especially Frank Grillo bring on his acting skills in several scenes. I especially enjoy the performance from actor Dermot Mulroney ( who i especially remember from the 2013 psychological thriller Stoker ) as the character Sage. We even see martial arts actor Scott Adkins in this film for a couple of scenes. Ok so we might as well get into something i feel could have been better, and honestly some fighting scenes feel a bit too weak. While some scenes hit in the right spot there are a couple of fighting scenes that doesn´t leave a bigger impact. Considering this is a film you would want to include powerful fights i feel they could have done the punches even stronger in certain scenes. With that said i still feel Lights Out manage to become a fighting action drama that´s exactly what we need to see more of in the future. Director Christian Sesma have made a film that knows what audience it was made for and i appreciate the effort, it is a good looking film and feels like a throwback tribute to the 90´s. If you love the classic Lionheart you simply have to check out Lights Out, no matter if you watch it on streaming or on a physical copy. Lights Out proves there is still hope for films of this specific genre.

Rating: DDD