Bullet Points: Bad Frank
There have been a lot of movies with the word “Bad” in the title in recent years. Bad Santa, Bad Moms, The Bad Batch; but there haven’t been many movies where the “bad” person headbutt anyone to death! The days of those sissy “bad” movies are gone now because we can finally listen to the sounds of two head colliding with such an impact that you can actually hear when the one gets softer and turns to mush. Got your attention yet? He’s a bad guy….
Synopsis: Frank Pierce leads a seemingly normal life, but when a disturbing past reemerges & something precious is taken from him, his mask of sanity loosens & unearths the urge to be violent once again.
- Normal Frank: The character of Frank Pierce is played by actor Kevin Interdonato. Chance are you have seen him in some form or another over the last 15 years. If you’ve watched any movie or television show with an Italian mafia lackey then you’ve most likely seen him. Let’s just say that he plays a lot of characters by the name of “Tony”. That is perfect for the role of Frank in this but we spend most of the movie being introduced to “normal Frank” and not so much “bad Frank”. Normal Frank has a wife and a nice house, works the night shift, and takes medication for his headaches. We see that he’s no longer using alcohol or drugs and he’s been trying to reconnect with his parents. It’s clear that his years of getting into trouble has caused them a whole lot of trouble and they’re leery to accept him back into their inner circle.
- Getting My Attention: Note to all directors, if you want to get my attention in the very first minutes of the movie then start it off with a sex scene.
- Welcome Back Tom: Action legend Tom Sizemore returns to the BPA stage as he plays Mickey Duro. He’s a former mentor to Frank and a current asshole who still deals drugs and does all sorts of bad guy stuff. It’s only after Frank and Mickey meet back up that the wheels start coming off for normal Frank. It was damn good to see Tom Sizemore again, though. I thought he did a really good job of playing a man who was obviously dangerous in his own right but also scared almost shitless by what Frank might do. I’ve seen Sizemore in a few pictures in the last several years and this is the best Tom that I can remember.
- Taken: I’ve seen a few write-ups trying to compare this movie to Taken. That sounds downright ignorant to me. This movie, at no point, is anything like the Liam Neeson flick. Hell, Liam is a heroic character in that movie and we know from the title that Frank is going to become a “BAD” dude. I’d liken this movie more to A History of Violence than anything and even that might be a bit of a stretch. The fact that Frank’s wife gets kidnapped and he has to find her is about the only thing that it has in common with Taken, so don’t get your hopes up for some globe-trotting affair with Frank heading into Bulgaria to find his lady.
- Kevin Can’t Wait: Interdonato does an exceptional job playing the various levels of Frankiness in this movie. What I liked most of all about his portrayal is that you could always sense that there was something bubbling up underneath his façade. The movie gives him plenty of time to build up and it leads to his volcanic eruption at the end…or does it?
The Verdict: This is one of those movies that I wasn’t expecting much from. My dear friend Chris the Brain sent me the trailer and said that it looked like the type of movie that I’d be interested in. He wasn’t wrong. Bad Frank has many good to great things about it. Interdonato and Sizemore both do a great job and I found the unfamiliarity with the writer/director and the actors left me with less of an idea as to where the movie was going. I knew, of course, that with Frank being “Bad” and all that it wasn’t exactly going to end with them skipping down the road whistling tunes. I wish there would have been more action! That is my one knock on the movie and one spot where it could have improved in my eyes. It’s probably more of a thriller than an action movie but it is still an entertaining movie and it earned my money.
